Requiem for a Lullaby
by Spylace
Summary: Yamamoto's in a coma and doesn't seem to want to wake up -complete-
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn no matter how much I would like to.

**Summary:** Ten years later in the future, Yamamoto must come to terms with his past, present and future.

**A.N.:** I think I found my newest obsession x3. A TYL!fic (or is it a nine year and however many months fic?) set in the timeframe before the Millefore's attack. Sawada Tsuna is alive and so is Yamamoto Tsuyoshi.

Read and review, pretty please?

**Requiem for a Lullaby**

The swallow's wings spread over them like the rosy fingers of dawn. Men turned their faces up to the ceiling in relief. A few even opened their mouths to catch the droplets of rain as it came down to wash everything away. The blood is rinsed off of their clothes, their hair, their skin. It is like an absolution of sorts that Yamamoto cannot help but freely offer. It is softness, kindness, weakness that he has yet to grow out of. He let the briefest flicker of smile to touch his lips before ducking his head to speak into the miniature transceiver.

"What is the situation?"

The noise of static and scratchy footsteps filled the air. Frowning, he held the speaker closer to his ear. He signaled the men to start cleaning up the scene. No one may know what has happened here except for him and his men. It is his duty to the Vongola Famiglia as the guardian of rain, to 'wash' away their enemies until no traces are left.**(1)**

"_Bzzt_... Angelo Pittaluga has ..._bzzt_... withdrawn to the second level... the Cloud _bzzzt...bzz_... Guardian has gone after him."

Yamamoto lightly bit the tip of his tongue in reply.

Angelo Pittaluga, mid-thirties, one of the best marksmen of his generation. Only a week ago, Angelo had lost to Sasagawa Ryohei in a bout of '_extreme_' drinking and ended up a suit poorer when he had been forced to streak down the hallways. He himself had never particularly liked the man. There was always something unsettling about the way the brunette's gaze lingered too long on him, on everything and everywhere.

"Sir? Will you be going after him?"

The Cloud Guardian Hibari Kyoya would be more than a match for the wayward sniper but this was a man who had escaped even the tenth boss' superior intuition. Yamamoto laughed at the dilemma, tapping the bamboo surface of the shinai against his shoulder.

He smiled at his second, Cecelia Acquati.

"Haha, I shouldn't."

-x-

"_...Why?"_

"_Vongola... Nascosto_**(2)**_, mafia, gangsters, Irish mob, yakuza, Yamamoto-__**san,**__ are all the same... the difference is the number of zeros you offered."_

"_You're wrong; the difference is that the Vongola is family."_

"_Stop trying to reason with him foolish herbivore."_

-x-

The stone fragmented into violet shards and scattered over the ground.

Hibari twisted the broken ring off with a flick of his wrist and carelessly discarded it behind him. As he was about to replace it with a C-grade ring, Angelo's bullet took it and half the skin off of the back of his hand. Wordlessly the Cloud Guardian ducked and rolled, what bullets he cannot dodge, he simply deflected with his tonfa.

The man was good. He was immediately able to grasp the chink in the impenetrable armor when Hibari had to stop to switch his ruined rings.

"Wao... not bad."

He slipped a painted finger through a D-grade ring. The surface of its stone is already fogged and cracking. He skidded against the wet concrete as another round of bullets dots the path he took. He stared irritably down at the unfortunate draw and presses it against the keyhole of his attack box.

Immediately, balls of spikes appeared in midair floating freely around the former prefect's lean form. The guns fired once more and two of the box animals moved forward to capture the sniper. At first glance, the creatures swallowed the bullets as the clouds might do to the sun. In mere moments, shrapnel sprays out of the box animals in all directions. Hibari jumped back, an arm raised to protect his face as the cloud-attribute animals lay uncurled on the floor in defeat. The remaining two shook uneasily in pain. Then Hibari saw it, the metallic glint of the ring around the brunette's neck.

The yellow dying-will flames jumped from its bearer to the black surface of his guns. A sun-attribute, it explained why his attacks had no bearings on the man. Hibari dourly pressed his lips into a thin line. From what the Rain Guardian had told him about the brunette, Angelo Pittaluga had never shown any inclination towards the rings or the boxes, preferring to rely on his arsenal of guns. But still, producing flames strong enough to defend against his attacks was an impressive feat. The mission would be more interesting than Hibari had originally thought.

Angelo concentrated his dying-will flames into the empty chamber and fires. His box animals put up an impressive wall but at most, the two would cancel each other out as opposing elements. Hibari braced himself.

"_Sakamaku ame,_"

The water arced over into a shield. Yamamoto kneeled with his back towards the aloof guardian, his sword parallel to his arm. "Hibari, are you alright?" and he dodged the subsequent series of blows that followed.

"Mind your own battles herbivore." Hibari spat, tossing away his ring. He drew another D grade, with a click of his tongue he placed a second over it. If Yamamoto noticed sudden expenditure, he did not comment. The younger man simply signaled the elder to duck as the water came down, drenching them as bullets flew overhead.

"Haha, we're supposed to do this one together." He swung his sword like a bat. The metal blade humed tonelessly as it slices through the air and the bullets slowed at the shockwave produced. Hibari struck them out of the air as the swallow dove and formed the beginnings of a storm beneath its tapered wings.

The rain stung his eyes but he kept them open. He had learned a long time ago not to close his eyes during the deception which would slowly sap its others of strength. His skin briefly grew numb before re-warming. The Rain Guardian's energy flowed freely between them, tranquil blue mixing with the more violent purple. His box animals revived and the Cloud Guardian merely grunted his thanks.

The spell of rain broke with an ear-splitting roar. The droplets melted away into steam as a box animal emerged bristling its luxurious mane. Angelo is smiling from a distance as the sun-attribute lion batted irately at the comet-like shape of the swallow. Yamamoto laughed, seeming to think all this a jest and rolled his ring box in his hand.

"Ah that's bad isn't it?"

If there was a worse combination than cloud and sun would have been sun and rain.**(3)** The swift wings trailed water down upon the larger box animal, quelling the light of its pelt to a dull brassy glow. The feline leaped and missed, landing amongst the balls of spikes as they crowded it in between themselves. The D-grade ring shattered. Hibari crouched beneath the belly of the lion, feeling the yellow flames lick through his suit as he snapped both its hind legs with his tonfa. The remaining ring cracked and he was forced to back off. Unable to take the rings off just then, he reached into his pockets and slid his thumb halfway through the first ring he was able to grab a hold of. Angelo took the opportunity and fired.

Yamamoto slid in front of the Cloud Guardian and launched a '_shinotsuku ame'_. The katana clove the bullets into perfect halves. They exploded and sent white sparks crawling down the silver length of Shigure Kintoki. The Rain Guardian blinked when he saw the gun kick back and spit out empty cartilages. The second round of bullets rippled through the barrier of cloud and rain just as he reached the pinnacle of his swing. Yamamoto did not realize he has been hit until he stumbled back against the crushing force, tripping over Hibari who shot past from behind his knees and struck the rogue hitman down with his tonfa.

Yamamoto fell but strangely did not feel any pain. He saw the image of the golden lion slow to extinguish. His swallow returned to him bare and seemingly vulnerable without its fiery coat of feathers. Only a mere suggestion of a flickering fire alighted its forked tail as it tugged at the short strands of his hair. He sleepily mumbled at it to stop, laughter caught somewhere at the back of his teeth and inside his throat.

His head felt heavy but that was not anything new. He had not been able to sleep ever since he got the news that Angelo had defected to another family. He frowned, giggling at the word '_defezionante_'.**(4)** What a strange word though Gokudera would probably slap him over the head and call him a moron if he ever voiced the sentiment out loud.

'Oof'

He had not even noticed Hibari beside him pulling him into a sitting position. His swallow clung tenaciously onto his shoulder as his torso becomes upright and perpendicular to the floor. His head rolled dizzyingly over his neck and it took him a moment to regain focus on his senior's disgruntled face. He tried to smile and ask what is wrong when with a cough, he spat out strangely warm liquid from his mouth. It was not puke as far as he could tell. He had not vomited over a mission since, never. He wheezed and saw that he blew some more of the sticky red stuff into the air. It tasted coppery, strange; he did not remember having bits of metal for breakfast. He coughed again and this time it penetrates through the layers of adrenaline pouring through his veins. He keened through a mouthful of salt. Hibari ripped his shirt open and pushed it up until he could see the muscled stomach splattered with oozing blood—_his_ blood. Yamamoto gave a short groan and feebly tried to push the other guardian away. Hibari simply slapped at his hands and took his jacket off to sponge off the excess blood. Alarm blared piercingly at some obscure corner of his mind, Vongola's guardian of rain touched the dark-warm liquid and brought it up to his face as though mesmerized.

"_Look what daddy got me mommy!"_

"_Don't come in here Takeshi!"_

"I need a medic over here!" Hibari barked as he pressed down upon the wound to staunch its flow.

Yamamoto grabbed the Cloud Guardian's wrist with surprising strength for someone who has been shot in the stomach. Reminding himself that Yamamoto is injured with a—_potentially_—fatal wound, Hibari raised his head and looked at the other man in the eye.

For once the boyish grin was gone from his face. Aside from the flecks of blood lining his nostrils and the too scarlet lips, Hibari could have honestly believed that it was another mission briefing perhaps, maybe another lecture from the abnormally tall herbivore about how he should take better care of himself.

"...This is how my mother died."

He said it so earnestly that Hibari privately wondered if the words had been uttered at all. The younger man held his gaze for a moment longer as the pupils widened to lap up the dark honey of his eyes. The hand at his wrist slackened and let go entirely. The Cloud Guardian spat out a short curse and smothered the wound with his jacket. All around them has grown quiet, a man jogged up to them carrying a first aid kit. Hibari kicked at the man's head.

"Get a medic before I bite you all to death!!"

**(1)** My interpretation is that while the storm, the sun, and the thunder attack from the front lines, the rain acts behind the scenes eliminating enemies from the shadows and 'washing away' traces of battle when the others are finished.  
**(2) '**Nascosto' means 'hidden' or 'concealed' in Italian. A fictional family I made up that henceforth will no longer be mentioned. I think.  
**(3) **I think some attributes work better together with each other than others. For example, logically the sun couldn't be paired up with rain (or any of the others except the sky) because they'd cancel each other out.  
Technically 'storm' is the opposite of 'sun' but since the sun is supposed to revitalize, I figure it could be an effective counter for the sedative like effects of 'rain'.  
**(4) **'Defezionante' means 'defected' in Italian. I think I got the tense right but please correct me if I am wrong


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn no matter how much I would like to.

**Summary:** Ten years later in the future, Yamamoto must come to terms with his past, present and future.

**A.N.:** Haha... it's been entirely too long since I've updated but Yamamoto hasn't had much screen time lately –makes a face- here's the second chapter-!

.

**Garowyn**** –** Thanks :)

**Requiem for a Lullaby**

_Reborn heard the song, as faint as it was. _

_It was what rouses him from a troubled sleep and held him in an enchanted state even as his mind struggled to grasp what was and what was not. He pressed his palm to his eyes rubbing the gritty sand out from the creased corners as he sat up. He swung his legs over the bed and slipped his bony toes into a pair of slippers that has seen better days. The fuzzy bunnies shuffled across the tiled floor as he wrapped his arms around himself to better preserve warmth. _

_And he heard it again though he could be sure of its source. _

_He stood over one of his more talented disciples who clung to life only by the grace of modern technology. The light humming seemed to be coming from the slightly parted lips though he was sure, it was only faint rattling. He pressed the back of his fingers against the sallow cheeks hoping to breathe life back into them. But Yamamoto didn't awake, not right then at least. It seemed as though he wouldn't awake for a long time._

-x-

The guardians, those who could be spared (and even those that couldn't), gathered in front of the surgery room. Even Reborn in his state of fragile health dozed lightly on the wooden bench. The men, after seeing the echelon of the family forego the comforts of the lounge to wait in front of the heavy doors have delivered cushions and chairs to make the wait bearable at least physically if not mentally. Hibari glared daggers at them for disturbing the peace.

Tsuna wondered if the Cloud Guardian realized he was constantly tugging at the bandaging around his hand. Complaining loudly, Gokudera put up a show of nonchalance as he scowled over paperwork. But it was a fact that he had not read through a single page nor signed a single contract in the past hour and a half. Rambo tugged his knees under his chin from his nest of cushions on the floor. Chrome patted him awkwardly on the shoulders before wrapping her arms around herself.

Haru brought everyone a cup of coffee but he's the only one who takes one. He quietly sipped and remarked that it's good before placing it on the bench arm. Haru offered a shaky smile and stared blankly at the white operation sign before turning away. She gave a small laugh and set the tray on the floor by Rambo's fortress before leaving.

The hot liquid sloshed down his throat and burned his entrails. He wondered if that was what Yamamoto is feeling right now.

-x-

Only hours later did Dr. Shamal exit the surgery room and even then it was because another team of surgeons had relieved him of his duties. He rubbed his head with his wrist and sighed at the expectant faces, from the 10th Vongola head Sawada Tsunayoshi's solemn stare to Rambo's sleepy vulnerability. He peeled off the bloody gloves from his hands, the slight squelch and the ripping sound eliciting a flinch out of everyone but Reborn.

The man looked paler than usual; he would have to up the dosage on the meds even if it meant having the greatest hitman in history stumbling around their hidden base like a drunkard. He threw his gloves in the trashcan and missed. It left a splotch of red on the stainless steel color before falling to the ground. No one paid much attention to it. Shamal cleared his throat and addressed the formal prefect of Namimori Middle School,

"'s a good thing you kept a level head, saved him from bleeding out before the shock got to him."

"Hn," Hibari grunted noncommittally but he had known the kid long enough to notice that the terseness in his limbs had loosened slightly. Shrugging with his usual carefree air he listed off the standard procedures and gave his prognosis. Angelo Pittaluga had been a remarkable marksman and it was miraculous that Yamamoto had gotten off _**lightly**_ as he did. But it did not change the fact that the Yamamoto had been shot multiple times. One bullet had curved down to the lower stomach, barely missing the kidneys and constructing an entire subway map around his intestines. The other, however, had flown true to puncture his lung and lodged near his spinal cord. The bullet in the lower stomach they could move, but the area around the spinal cord was too delicate for a hasty procedure. It did not help that Yamamoto had lost a substantial amount of blood on his way to Namimori General Hospital**(1)**.

"He'd have to be a little stronger before we risk picking out bullet fragments from his back." Shamal nodded towards the surgery room door. "They have a sun-attribute box wielder with them to make sure the cuts close properly." Hibari bristled slightly at the word 'sun'.

Tsuna frowned.

"But I thought the different wave energies canceled each other out?"

"I know," Shamal replied cryptically, "that's why I'm worried. He's always been somewhat immune to sun wave energies." Rain-attributes were a dime a dozen. They would have to be, despite all appearances, they were the ones who led the most violent lives. Their commonness meant that they were mediocre in terms of power at best. This caused basic grunt work to be relegated to even the most senior of rain-attributes. Most rain-attributes he had ever known had died cleaning up a scene. But people like Squalo and Yamamoto, Basil, Colonello and Lal Mirch made up the few exceptional individuals that occupied the extreme end of the spectrum. They were powerful—certainly, hadn't Squalo been once thought as the future leader of the Varia?—but they were too far and few in between. They complemented most wave energies well but they tended to be resistant towards sun-wave energies leaving them to heal the good old fashioned way. For Yamamoto's body to suddenly start soaking up the sun did not make sense.

"When will he wake up?" Chrome asked, her hand nervously dancing over the eye patch over her right eye.

Shamal sighed,

"I don't know."

-x-

"That... pervert...! Useless... dammit..."

"Gokudera."

The silver-haired Italian apologized immediately with a short bow, Tsuna sighed.

Hibari took off once Yamamoto had been wheeled out of surgery. The rest (with the exception of Reborn who had sat on the bench watching with weary eyes) had gathered around the stretcher where the tall Japanese was laid out. He had looked shrunken, vulnerable in his hospital gown and cocooned in scratchy surgery blankets. He had been hooked up to one too many IV lines. Rambo had burst into tears when he realized that even the Rain Guardian's face was not free of the plastic tubes.

Unimpressed, the doctors had paused for a minute more and before taking Yamamoto away. Tsuna had to pull many strings (as they were not immediate family, they were initially denied access) just to find the man's room number. And even when they had gotten to the door, the head nurse politely requested that only one person at a time may be allowed. Fed up with restrictions in visitation rights to _**his**_ family member, Tsuna had merely tossed her a glare before entering the ICU with the rest following.

Yamamoto looked even worse in the ICU than when he had first come out of surgery. The oxygen mask hissed periodically as it inflated the man's lungs. The heart monitor beeped, faintly but steadily. Rambo had broken out into tears again and the girls (Kyoko, Haru and I-Pin) joined him immediately. Ryohei sniffled a little before declaring that this was "extremely emotional" for him. Tsuna shook his head before putting on a sad smile. He looked down on the Vongola's rain guardian, pale as paste and probably in a worse condition. He clenched his hand once before releasing it.

"How am I going to tell his father?"

"10th..."

The door slowly creaked open and without thinking, everyone took a defensive position. Haru and Kyoko**(2)** were herded behind I-Pin and Rambo who stood behind Ryohei and Gokudera. A twitching orange flame bloomed on Tsuna's brow before extinguishing as the intruder revealed herself.

Chrome shyly opened the door, pushing a wheelchair-bound Reborn forward. The ultimate hitman was carrying an armful of gifts from Yamamoto's underlings and well wishers. He took one glance at their positions and irritably told them—"don't be stupid". They hurried to receive the fruit baskets and flowers from the Arcobaleno. They had always known Yamamoto was liked, even loved. But to see it manifest into a physical being, even they were surprised at the sheer magnitude of what Yamamoto stood for.

-x-

Hibari was one of the last to visit at the end of the day. Already the evidence of others is overcrowding the bedside table. Get well cards, flowers and sweets overflowed from its wooden surface. Hibari curled his lips up at the mess and made sure that at least, none of it ends up in the trashcan before the herbivore could see it. He did not sit down though the uncomfortable—but portable—chair had been placed strategically beside the bed. He remained standing, running a thumb absentmindedly across his bandaged hand as he stared out the window.

It was a clear day with sunlight still lingering upon the horizon. Ten years ago it would have been the perfect time for baseball practice. The junior would have been batting while the duller herds watched in the stands and he at his window in the reception office. The idiot would have noticed eventually and waved at the hostile senior notwithstanding the withering glare he would have given in reply.

Somehow in the ten years the boy had grown into an even bigger, stupider herbivore. He didn't know what possessed the man to throw himself in the line of fire so recklessly like that. Even less of what the man managed to spit out in his last moments of consciousness.

He pressed his index finger against Yamamoto's forehead in a light stabbing motion. The Rain Guardian's forehead did not crease in confusion the way it does whenever Hibari had to resort to using the method undercover. He felt disappointed; if the herbivore had been faking it he would have shoved a tonfa up his unmentionable places. If the man had woken up disoriented as one tended to do after surgery and anesthetics, he would have tried to bash his face in to test reflexes and determine that his favorite punching bag wasn't permanently damaged.

Hibari let out a clipped breathing.

"Che, how... troublesome."

-x-

_Reborn pushed their beds together. The bed frame shakes and the legs scrape sharply against the floor. He lay back down on his bed, trying to control his breathing back into even bursts. All through this the strange humming does not cease and though Yamamoto remained oblivious to them, Reborn was now sure he is the source of this sound. But what is it and why does it sound so familiar? He turned his face sideways studying the profile of his former pupil. He saw the tiny gurgles of his throat as he exhaled the last notes. He laid his hand against it and felt the vibrations travel down the bones of his wrists. It's strangely pleasant and oddly comforting. His hand glows briefly, warm with yellow-sun energy. There is a tint of blue cast to Yamamoto's skin that is not wholly because of his lack of blood. But the rain energy recedes immediately and allows the golden light to flood the neck area. It's not much, he was too week now to do much. His specialty had always lain with assassinations. He regrets neglecting his powers though they had been largely irrelevant throughout most of his career._**(3)**_ Only when he had become Tsuna's tutor had it been worth anything and even then... his fingers curl loosely around the man's ear, and he falls asleep._

_It is the first full night of sleep he has had in a long time._

.

**(1) **I don't remember the name of the hospital Tsuna shared a room with Hibari in. Does anyone know??  
**(2) **By 10 years in the future, I think Haru and Kyoko know what is going on. (Well I'm sure Haru did but Kyoko...) at best they might be employed as secretaries but I think that they would mostly maintain their civilian lives.  
**(3)** The sun energy represents regeneration. For a hitman like Reborn, I think it's a relatively useless power unless he had a box animal or some type of a box equipment, or if he used it to heal himself.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn no matter how much I would like to.

**Summary:** A family member's betrayal strikes deep, but deeper still is the break in the Rain Guardian's psyche that they must try and confront

**A.N.:** Ah an update at last. To those who are up-to-date on manga chapters, don't you find it odd that Yamamoto Takeshi hasn't even tried to look for his father? You see the TYL!Yamamoto all broken up looking about the death of Yamamoto Tsuyoshi and now there is nothing. Weird...;;;

As always, press that vaguely dubious looking purplish review button please.

It'll make my day :)

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**supercakefairy** - Thank you

**Requiem for a Lullaby**

_"Look mommy look! Look what daddy got me!"_

_"Don't come in here Takeshi!"_

_"??!"_

_"Takeshi what... Azzurra? Azzurra!"_**(1)**

-x-

Yamamoto Tsuyoshi stormed into the hospital, still wearing his work clothes and clenching a fish knife in his hands. People who saw him coming dove out of the way as the man pushed the crowd apart with bloodied hands. There were screams, enough that the rest couldn't possibly ignore what was happening. The security stood up to subdue the man but with one cursory glance from the Cloud Guardian, they sat back down with their eyes turned elsewhere. Without preamble the Rain Guardian's father grabbed Reborn's collar, smudging salt and fish guts over the expensive shirt. Reborn didn't seem to mind as he maintained a bland expression, even when the man began to furiously shake him.

"Why did you bring my son into this!?"

With a slight yelp, Tsuna tried to tear the two apart. The man before him was no longer Yamamoto's cheerful father. He was no longer the man who used to provide 'Takeshi's friends' with free sushi. What the brunette saw before him was the heir to the Shigure Souen Ryu. What he saw before him was an image of the assassin the man once was.

"I never intended to. I didn't know he was your son _Yamamoto Tsuyoshi_, I only knew what I saw, a _born_ assassin."

Reborn continued steadily, "You can't betray blood Yamamoto."

-x-

Sawada Tsunayoshi shook his head before closing the blinds shut.

"...I had suspected... but I never knew that Yamamoto's father had dealings with the Vongola."

"He was an annaiya** (2)**. His mother was the translator. Things happen, they always do." Reborn replied flippantly to the unvoiced question.

Behind them, an acupuncturist delicately prodded the Rain Guardian's nerve endings. Beads of sweat formed on the man's receding hairline and he had to mop it with his sleeve every few seconds. The situation was further exacerbated by the fact that Cecelia had a small dagger held to the bobbing vein on the man's neck.

The lieutenant's unwavering loyalty was admirable but the last thing they needed was to have Yamamoto accidentally paralyzed for life. Fortunately, the man soon wrapped up and they were allowed to relax, about an inch, as Cecelia sheathed the blade. The man blurted out something about muscle toning or another before Tsuna waved him off. He was more interested in the hand woven blue threads in the hilt.

"Nice dagger you've got there."

"Oh this," the blonde woman blushed before reluctantly letting it part from her hands. Reborn held it up to the light and tested its balance on the tip of his index finger. The dagger maintained a perfect balance before he faltered and let it fall sideways. Tsuna plucked it out of midair before handing it back to Cecelia. With a self-derogatory snort, Reborn returned the sheath. "It was a gift," she stammered, "Signor Yamamoto said I was a natural. I..." her hands clenched over the blade making them bleed. "Ah..." she looked at the split skin in a curious matter, still holding on to the dagger.

Tsuna's eyes became round,

"You should get that looked at."

"...Ah, yes, of course. Thank you boss." She bowed and turned around coming head to head with the silver-haired guardian of the storm. They stumbled backwards, Cecelia staggering against the bedside table with a hand to her temple, Gokudera against the senior Yamamoto who had cleaned up substantially since they last saw him downstairs. Gokudera snarled as the items cluttering the beige surface. Cecelia squeaked and as one particular item rolled to a stop, it burst into blue flames and evaporated into a cloud of fog.

"Shit."

The cloud floated over the life support before solidifying. It cheeped plaintively at them all and ruffled its feathers. Tsuyoshi leaned down to pick up the blue-patterned animal box as Gokudera ushered the blonde lieutenant out of the room. The swallow opened its beak once more and closed it before hopping over next to the younger Yamamoto's head. Swallowing, Tsuyoshi set the box down by the bedside table and collapsed into the chair.

"Yamamoto-san," Tsuna greeted. Reborn nodded curtly.

"They say he might not wake up." Yamamoto Tsuyoshi said after a while. Gokudera rolled his eyes towards the ceiling, holding his breath and counting down from one hundred. Tsuyoshi wrung his fingers out before burying his face into his right hand. "What happened to my son?"

-x-

Chrome kept a tight grip on her trident as she walked daintily down the streets, stepping sideways warily whenever a shadow came up behind her. Though she was following the Yamamotos, neither of the two looked back at the girl with one eye. When a small house came into view, the boy sprang away from his father and up the steps. Tsuyoshi, in his prime with his abs yet to bloat into the state of present, warned him to be careful up the stairs. With a rueful shake of his head, Tsuyoshi followed his son into his home.

As the man's hand touched the doorknob, muffled screams started and was cut short. With a panicked shout, Yamamoto Tsuyoshi flung open the door and charged inside. Terrified into acting, Chrome jumped through the disintegrating walls and into the living room where a woman had been shot twice and was falling backwards onto her young son. The perpetrator was a scruffy looking brunette between the age of 30 and 40. But she paid him no heed as she caught the woman's shoulders in her hands and let her melt through her fingers.

_"Yarazu no ame!"_**(3)**Tsuyoshi drop-kicked a small knife into the man's chest. The stranger tripped backwards and slammed his head against the cabinets. Tsuyoshi turned around to look at his son and his wife but it was already too late. Yamamoto Azzurra laid dead, their son Takeshi covered in red and shivering beneath her body. The boy's eyes roved wildly, to anywhere but at the slippery liquid soaking his shirt and skin.

_"Takeshi!"_

To anywhere but her slack mouth, pale skin, dark hair, and the blood on her skin.

_"Azzurra? Azzurra!"_

To her remaining blue eye, where he reached her, found understanding but no comfort in it, and began to scream.

-x-

Chrome collapsed to her knees and began to heave, nothing but a string of saliva sliding out of her mouth as she tried to compose herself. Hibari looked down at the Vongola's Mist Guardian unimpressed. He handed her a tissue before folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the wall. Chrome breathed deep and shivered, a trident forming in her hand as though to comfort her. Hibari clicked his tongue,

"What have you found?"

"Nothing," Chrome said, dabbing at her mouth. Her face had grown sweaty and pasty giving her skin a milky sheen. "Nothing that can help."

"Hnn... have you talked to him?"

"I couldn't. He wouldn't talk to me, I couldn't." she breathed, her hand stretching towards the wall. Using her trident as a support, she stood up. "I am not strong enough, I can only watch."

"And what have you seen?"

"...That this is causing him pain."

-x-

"Damn that baseball bastard." Gokudera swore as he signed off the papers one by one. Beside him, Rambo was in the process of rearranging the documents the way they were supposed to go into a file. It was hard, especially when the Storm Guardian seemed to have a method of his own. The teen's shoulders drooped when he heard the familiar nickname. Frustrated, he shoved leaves of paper in one file and ended up shooting it off the table.

The silver-haired half-Italian shot him daggers. The heir to the Bovino family knelt down and picked the papers up one by one. By chance, one had become lodged beneath the Storm Guardian's shoes. Irritably, Gokudera peeled it off his soles and looked at it. It was the history of the moron's medical records. The last thing down the list circled large doses of sedatives and anti-depressants. Frowning, he looked at the record and down at the paper he was looking over.

The one he was holding had started 25 years ago and ended abruptly when Yamamoto would have been either 4 or 5. The one on the table had started 10 years ago. 10 years ago when Yamamoto had tagged along with their group, thinking it all a game. It wasn't the first page of the Rain Guardian's medical history, the page number showed no indication of Yamamoto existing prior to their meeting 10 years back. The paper he had chanced upon was old, and yellowing slightly at the edges. He couldn't make out the characters for the hospital it was issued from but he could find out easily enough.

"Cow," he snapped, "give me that file."

"What for?" Rambo whined, handing the file to him. Gokudera ignored the Thunder Guardian and thumbed through the papers. "This is..."

-x-

"This is _extreme_, even for you." Ryohei commented, a reminiscent of his fiery, teenage years. Kangaryuu cried beside him in reply, nuzzling the sterile sheets before looking inquisitively up at the Cloud Guardian. Then she resumed, licking the fading bruises on Yamamoto's arm. "Never thought you'd show up."

Hibari sneered and showed his teeth. Reborn, on a bed on the other side of the room growled in warning before slamming his hat firmly over his eyes. It was one of those days. Bubbles burst in Yamamoto's IV bag but no one paid attention, only to the slight hiss the ventilator made as it squeezed precious oxygen into the Rain Guardian's lungs.

"There is no improvement?"

"I wish." And the man rubbed his box animal's head.

The door banged open and immediately Hibari was at the intruder's throat, his tonfa blocking Gokudera's airway. Reborn had drawn his gun when the Storm Guardian had run in but dropped it back in his lap. Only Ryohei had remained still, making sure that the Rain Guardian's vitals remained strong.

"What. Is. It. herbivore?"

"It's important," Gokudera hissed out, flapping a file in the former prefect's face. Hibari wrinkled his nose before snatching the file with his other hand. The silver-haired man drew a deep breath as he was released, one hand climbing up to massage his neck. "Where's his dad?"

Ryohei thrust his fist into the air,

"He said he would make us sushi!"

"He needed some air." Reborn explained, raising an eyebrow at the explosives expert. "He should be back soon."

"What is this?"

"What does it fucking look like, it's his medical eck-"

Without looking away from the file, Hibari had wedged the end of his tonfa against the soft underside of Gokudera's jaw.

"Do not mistake my intentions."

"Oh hello, are you another friend of Takeshi's?"

"No." Hibari said bluntly. Gokudera rubbed his face in exasperation as the older man nodded absentmindedly before setting the food down on the counter. After shouting a mild 'extreme!', Ryohei successfully freed a roll of maki-sushi and dug in. Reborn nibbled slightly on fresh tuna before setting it down on the floor for Kangaryuu to eat. Gokudera turned towards the haggard looking man and thrust the file under his nose.

"You need to explain, now."

Without looking at it, Yamamoto Tsuyoshi pushed it away, shaking his head and letting his chin rest on his hands.

"What is there to explain?"

"The baseball idiot was on anti-depressant for two weeks before he willed himself into a coma. He woke up three days later, how?"

Reborn looked up sharply,

"I don't know." Tsuyoshi breathed, looking at his son's slack face. "I just don't know."

"Wrong answer," Hibari said and raised his tonfa. Ryohei had to restrain him physically as Gokudera prodded him for a different reply.

"I don't know. He... three days later... he was just awake."

-x-

"Thank you Mukuro-san." Tsuna sighed as he closed the report. He rubbed his temples tiredly. Though the Rain Guardian was unconscious, the world went on around him uninterrupted, busy, and violent.

"My pleasure Sawada-kun." Tsuna still inwardly shuddered when the Mist Guardian addressed him like that. Sighing again he said,

"I see you've filed another request for a rain attribute."

Funny, he had never noticed it before. Rarely were storm attributes, cloud attributes, even sun attributes asked for. It was always the rain attributes that were getting replaced like yesterday's old newspaper. He had heard from the Varia that Squalo had taken on injuries while defending their territory on Italian soil. Colonello had gone missing; Reborn had grimly muttered he was probably dead. Before the assassination of Angelo Pittaluga, Yamamoto mentioned offhand his squad was getting stretched too thin. And now Yamamoto himself was in the hospital, unconscious and seemingly unlikely to recover.

"I suppose Yamamoto would be angry at me for losing another of his men. He is strangely attached to them."

"They're his men. He picked them out personally."

"Even so." Mukuro tapped his fingers against his arm. "There is a reason why there are not many powerful rain attributes."

Tsuna sighed,

"Don't Mukuro-san."

"Vongola,"

"Please."

"Very well."

-x-

Mukuro stepped out into the hall, vaguely wondering where Chrome was but knowing that if he chose to, he could find her easily. She would want to know that he had returned from his mission unscathed, but it wouldn't do to see her in his bloodied clothing. The 10th must have known though he had not commented. The 10th was still oddly soft, even after all the suffering, pain and battles.

He opened his jacket and sniffed the inner lining. It smelled like copper, even after all the effort he had gone through to mask it with his illusions. It was regretful. Salvai had easily been one of the better rain attributes. He had never complained about the gruesome scenes he had to clean up once Mukuro had finished with them. He was the only man Mukuro had ever thought about bringing with him on solo missions. No that was wrong—rain attributes were usually the only back up he requested. It would be a waste of energy trying to keep up the pretence of normality when another could easily wash away the stains.

Reminiscing, the Mist Guardian did not notice the predator that had stepped into his shadow.

"I see you still have yet to learn your lesson."

Hibari snorted in mild disbelief,

"I have a job for you."

**(1)** It is never stated in the series what has happened to Yamamoto's mother. Granted, Hibari and Ryohei's parents are never introduced even through random comments. On the other hand, the Yamamotos seem like a relatively close-knit family.  
In this story, Takeshi's mother is a translator who works for the Vongola family. One of her informants is Yamamoto Tsuyoshi.  
**(2)** Annaiya – an informant. I really don't think a Japanese man has much to do with the Italian mafia. So I turned him into someone who could inform on the yakuza to whoever wants the information. In this case the Vongola family.  
**(3)** Yarazu no Ame – Last minute rain. It's the attack where Yamamoto kicks his sword at his opponent.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn no matter how much I would like to.

**Summary:** Mukuro walks through Yamamoto dreams and finds nothing is to be expected from the comatose Rain Guardian.

**A.N.:** Reposted chapter 4 of **Requiem for a Lullaby**, sorry to disappoint those who were waiting for an actual update. Who knows, I might make it to Hibari's birthday (children's day 5/5 xD)

.

**thPeekaBoo** - Thanks, I hoped to have the new chapter up by the 5th but ahh... hello writer's block my old nemesis...

**Shin** - many things, many terrible things with Yama!whumpage (I solemnly acknowledge that I am a sadist)

**Shin-Ijin**- Thank you :)

**Requiem for a Lullaby**

_"I have a job for you."_

"This must mean that darling Chrome has failed in waking Yamamoto-san."

"Hn" Hibari made a derisive noise at the back of his throat before turning around. Mukuro began to follow, his footsteps light and delicate compared to the Cloud Guardian's confident strides. He adjusted his tie and let go of his illusion completely. There was no need to tease this time after all; Hibari Kyouya had sought him out instead of the other way around. He noticed the nostrils flaring at the sudden augment of his coppery perfume. Laughing inwardly, Mukuro composed himself, waiting for the other guardian to speak again.

He was not disappointed—"why else do you think I called you?"

"Fuu, you know Hibari-san, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar or the saying goes."

"Hmph, I have no use for flies... or weaklings."

"Is that what you're calling him nowadays?" Mukuro commented, lightly tossing the loose strands of hair back behind his ear. He turned his face away but already, the numbers in his right eye were slowly turning. "How cruel..." A vein began to twitch on the Cloud Guardian's forehead suggesting impatience. Hibari gave the odd-eyed illusionist a glare and began to edge away.

"I will call him whatever I like."

"He's on the third floor, west wing, private room number 303."

"Considering I am doing you a great service, if I may..." Mukuro called to the retreating form of the Cloud Guardian. "Why the sudden interest?" He honestly did not expect an answer and was pleasantly surprised when Hibari Kyouya deviated from his chosen path long enough to spit out a reply,

"Something bothers me about what the herbivore said."

"Yes?"

"He told me that his mother died the same way. At any rate..." Mukuro opened his mouth in an understanding—ahh and pursued the question no longer. With a decisively flat look, Hibari left.

"Who said it was _sudden_?"

**.**

**Mother...**

**.**

Mukuro had walked through many dreamscapes in his lifetime. Some, like those of the frightened children down in the Vendicare were grim with fields of grass and little else—sparse and plain like the concrete floor and metal walls that made up their entire existence. Some, like those of children whose minds brushed up against in interest but shied away from his shadows, were filled with light, imaginative with hopes that could never occur in reality. Some, like that of Chrome's, was of those who had given up on life, those with their dying-will flames dimmed to the barest traces of heat. Some, like that of Chrome's, was of children who were ready to give up their lives to the happiness of people that did not deserve it. He could not readily decide which category Yamamoto Takeshi belonged to. It irked him immensely that he had been called upon to fulfill such a task.

Mukuro opened his eyes and found himself on a grassy knoll, petals taking flight with his footsteps as he slowly made himself across the field. A trident formed in his hand, tendrils of violet-blue mist solidifying into steely metal. The sharpened point swung back and forth like a pendulum. He pointed in one direction to another, up, down, north, east, south, west. With each swing, the trident grew heavy and slowed until he reached the center of the field. The trident stopped its motion, pointing its forked end in the direction of the sky. Mukuro let go of his illusionary weapon, his face bland and devoid of any expectations. The counter in his right eye began to turn and the focus in his indigo eye sharpened. The petals fluttered around his ankles, offering to lift him up into the sky. The illusionist consented to the delicate chimes and smiled politely, his head dipping slightly in a semblance of a bow.

"There you are."

.

**If I could have...**

**I would have died instead of you that day...**

**.**

Basil's dolphin nosed the swallow's wing, eliciting no reaction. The outside advisor had been called in to manage the rain attributes during Yamamoto's downtime. He had arrived three days earlier but had seen nothing but the inside of the meeting room and the occasional glimpses of the toilet since. It was only when he had keeled over the table during lunch that Tsuna had called for recess. And somehow the brunette found himself wandering through the hospital wards until he arrived where the incumbent Rain Guardian slumbered. Not realizing that Reborn too was in the room, he had sat down next to the wilting flowers and colorful paper wrappings. His box animal had immediately burst out of its box, striking embers of blue across the tiled floor. In retaliation, the rain swallow had begun to screech, spreading its wings and what was left of its dying-will flames across the body of its master. Reborn had woken up then, a sniper rifle in his hand from god knows where pointed directly at the rain attribute's forehead. Things had quieted down and Reborn began to doze. Yamamoto's swallow, after fluffing its feathers up, hopped across the Rain Guardian's chest and settled down there. Basil's dolphin had tried to elicit it back into a play but failed repetitively.

"Poor thing," Basil murmured as with a playful squeal, the rain dolphin swam towards the ceiling with a powerful stroke of its tail. It touched the walls with its dorsal fin before diving back down to complete a loop. It chattered encouragingly at the bird which merely shivered and sat still. "He knows all is not well."

"The blind, deaf and dumb would know all is not well." Reborn sniped and Basil jumped, giggling nervously as the gunman roused himself from sleep. Grumpily, the older man brushed the grit from his eyes and sat up. The rain swallow chirped at him weakly. Reborn clicked his tongue. "Why are you still here?"

"Ah, did I wake you up... again Reborn-san?"

The ailing hitman snorted, curling his lips and kicking his legs out from under the white covers.

"Where is dame-Tsuna and the others?"

"Sawada-san is holding a lunch meeting with Hibari-san and Sasagawa-san. Gokudera-san is organizing the squadrons and Mukuro-san is... ah..."

"Never mind about the insomniac, where is the dumb cow and Chrome?"

"Rambo is in the cafeteria. Chrome is with Yamamoto-san."

"Hn. Get me the idiots."

The door opened and Shamal stepped in, scratching his head and yawning widely.

"Oh, you're awake."

Reborn raised a brow,

"And what do you want?"

Shamal nodded to Yamamoto,

"He's scheduled for the surgery in the evening. I'm here to check up on him and give the O.K."

"I don't recall..."

Shamal rolled his eyes,

"You were sleeping."

Reborn glared at the other man for a minute and muttered,

"Just get me dame-Tsuna."

.

**You would be alive**

**.**

By all rights among them, the Rain Guardian was the weakest**(1)**—the most easily replaceable. Yet he could not understand the attention the Cloud Guardian and the others were putting forth towards him. The tenth, he supposed, had an excuse what with being childhood friends. Same went for Sasagawa Ryohei, the Sun Guardian and Gokudera Hayato, the Storm Guardian. But with his darling Chrome falling in line with the rest in a fruitless attempt at reviving the swordsman, the illusionist could not help but be intrigued.

The wind blew quietly by his feet, like a slumbering dragon ready to awaken at a moment's notice. He raised a hand, as though caressing a lover. Mukuro glided along the streets, too lazy to put up a front of normalcy in the world of dreams and memories. The scene was as Chrome had described it to him, a typical childhood, a typical neighborhood, a typical life. But in the present, or the past, or whatever the unconscious Rain Guardian recalled of his past seemed desolate, somehow cheapened, as though there was something to be hidden, and always someone to be lied to. The neighborhood seemed empty, swings swayed back and forth alone. There was an echo of a child's laughter that he thought he heard but knew he was imagining. Children's dreams tended to be saturated with colors and light. Sometimes it felt as though staring out through a church's stained glass. But this was different, the place was worn, the shades washed out. Even the various grays, of polished concrete and marbles, paled and faded away into the iron sky. Though he had no idea why he had expected the mind of the Rain Guardian to be the same, he thought it bleak, the world Yamamoto Takeshi dreamed of.

He passed through walls, feeling as though he had been dumped in something frigid. He frowned, turning his head back to stare at the innocuous brick fence he had phased through. He swiped his hand back, stopping just before the side of his hand struck the surface. Curling his fingers, he let his index finger push into the air-like consistency of the bricks. It was cold, a kind of oblivion that seemed familiar but one he had never ventured towards. The number in his wine-colored eyes distorted and locked into the stark points of the character six. He pushed his entire hand in, grabbed the blackness and pulled out the threads, unraveling the delicate seam. The strings crawled, tried to insert itself beneath his skin. Chuckling, he burned them until the pieces fell into ashes by his feet.

The wind picked up again, murmuring secrets and winding around his legs. He held a finger to his lips, asking for silence. Then he began to walk again.

.

**Father would not be grieving**

**Father would have never had to open up a restaurant**

**He would have never had to give up the path of the sword**

**.**

"I am sorry Mukuro-sama, I..."

Chrome stood up immediately as Mukuro entered the hospital cafeteria, Ken and Chikusa trailing along like puppies happy to have their master home. She bowed, her violet gaze lowered to the tiled floor, her hand patting down her uniform skirt profusely. Beside her Yamamoto Tsuyoshi attempted a lax smile, recognizing the Vongola's Mist Guardian as one of Takeshi's friend. The illusionist smiled back and shook the man's hand before turning towards the girl he had taken as his own.

"That's alright." He patted her head gently and kissed her hair. He winked slowly, the right eye flickering between red and black. "It will all be fine."

.

**You would be alive**

**You would be happy**

**You would have been beautiful...**

**.**

One house in the neighborhood stood out against all others, the edges blurred but still recognizable in the construct of his surroundings. As he neared it, the sun seemed a little brighter, the colors a little sharper, his breathing became easier though he had not noticed it before. He felt his mind lift, limbs becoming loose and relaxed as he walked up the steps. Then the air became cold, the inside of the house dark and obscure. Only there were no walls anymore, just illusions, fleeting images of nothings.

Two figures in the kitchen were arguing, a tall Italian woman and a scruffy looking forty year old man. The man seemed to be pleading but the woman was resolute. She turned her head, a black cascade falling across her face. She would not help him; she was ready to become the sacrificial lamb in the process of raising the future Rain Guardian.

_"...will be soon..."_

_"Azzurra...!"_

"...Get out."

His leg exploded into a cloud of mist as a younger version of the Rain Guardian sprinted through his knee. Mukuro stretched out a hand, instinctively wanting to stop the boy from going near the doorway. The elder Yamamoto—Yamamoto Tsuyoshi—was too far behind. His calves reformed with an audible snap as the particles solidified into bone, pink and yellow muscles, and smooth skin. His fingers missed the boy's collar by inches. The tips of his fingers flirted through the boy's black hair before they slipped through his hold like grains of sand. The boy's exuberant laughter was like an afterthought, trailing far behind him like the distant whispers of a memory never quite realized. Yamamoto Tsuyoshi was further back, too far away to help, too far away to prevent what could have changed the course of their history.

"Look mommy look! Look what daddy got me!"

Yamamoto Azzurra turned around, her hazel-gray eyes wide and stained with fear. She ran towards the kitchen door, the guest startled into standing, his gun in his hand even before his legs cleared the table. Mukuro stood still, his hand still hanging in midair. He heard elder Yamamoto's footsteps quicken and knew that it was too late.

"Don't come in here Takeshi!"

_"Merda!"_

There was a baseball in Takeshi's hand—white but scuffed to suggest that the two Yamamoto males had played with it in the park before returning home. He was holding it with both hands, his five-year-old fingers not yet long enough to encompass the object with ease he would display in later years. Startled and spurred into action by the entrance of the boy, the scruffy man Yamamoto Azzurra had been talking to raised his gun and fired.

_._

**But you're not here**

**.**

"You need to pull out."

"What?"

Tsuna snapped around, his eyes wide. Reborn calmly said it again, his eyes patronizing as always when dealing with the 10th head of the Vongola family.

"You. Need. To. Pull. Out."

"What do you mean? Yamamoto's just gone in to surgery and...!"

"Dame-Tsuna, it's been a week."

Tsuna grew quiet, his eyes tearing, his hand fiddling with the hem of his sleeve. "All of your main fighting forces are here instead of at the headquarters, out in the front lines." Tsuna opened his mouth as if to speak but Reborn waved the words away. "Don't say Yamamoto needs this much protection, I'm sick not stupid, Hibari's basically turned this place into an army base anyways. You have no reason to be here."

Tsuna looked away,

"Yamamoto's never let me down, I can't leave him."

"You have no choice. Do you think Millefiore family will wait? Nocosta family? They should have been wiped off the minute Hibari took Angelo out."

"Yamamoto is my family!"

"Then he will understand." Reborn was suddenly in his face, his bony hands fisted around Tsuna's collar. The 10th Vongola felt his vision blur before clearing as the grip tightened and loosened in turn. Reborn's complexion was ashen, sweating and panting heavily from the sudden exertion. But the fire in his eyes, the dying-will flames, was something that could not be denied. "He understands..." Tsuna tried to look away but Reborn twisted his gaze back, splitting his thin lips with his teeth. "He will understand that you understand." Tsuna tried to roll his eyes, to stare at anything but the bloody teeth Reborn was bearing at him in a cruel grimace.

_"He doesn't want to. wake. Up."_

_._

**You're dead**

**.**

Mukuro Rokudo knew sacrifices very well.

He watched on, his face impassive but his eyes painted with odd sort of sorrow.

Two shots, just two. One became imbedded in her stomach; the other shot through her neck and severed the major vessels there. The blood streamed down in rivulets, painting her clothes in stark red as she collapsed to the floor. Takeshi came to a stop, the ball dropping to the floor as he tried to steady his mother with the minute hands that would one day become a killer's. He toppled beneath the dead weight, sandwiched between the convulsing body and hardwood floor.

"Yarazu no ame!"

Yamamoto Tsuyoshi burst in and drop-kicked a small knife into his chest. The strange man stumbled back and slammed the back of his head against the cabinet doors. The dishes and glasses clattered and fell to the floor. They shattered on impact, scattering across the dented wood. The man curled up on the floor in pain, grinding the side of his gun against the palm of his hand.

"Takeshi!" he hauled the body off the boy and hugged it to his chest. "Azzurra... Azzura!" He began to shake his wife back and forth, her head rolling back and forth listlessly around her shoulders. She tried to speak, blood bubbling out in spittles against her lips. Instead her body began to seize, her back arching as her limbs grew stiff.

Takeshi laid where he had fallen, his golden eyes vacant. There might have been screaming, certainly, but he didn't hear it. Because the screams had never been real, there had been intent, but the screams had never manifested into a physical form.

The ball rolled to a stop at Mukuro's feet.

"Kufufufufu… you're becoming quite the liar."

A soft sigh, indigo flames at his feet, crawling up

_"Mukuro..."_

.

**I am motherless and father wifeless by my design, by my mistake, by my stupidity, youth and weakness.**

**.**

"There are people waiting for you."

Yamamoto laughed, ending it with a series of muffled coughs. Yamamoto looked wane and pale as his physical counterpart. He attempted a shaky smile, scratching his head with more gravity than actual sheepishness. The Mist Guardian narrowed his eyes, shoulders tensing as he drew out his trident with an even stroke of his hands. The indigo flames that lighted the weapons, his rings, his fingers, his hand and arm, jumped outwards and shattered the world. The glass splintered and sprayed like a million fragments of diamond dust. The swordsman winced and raised a hand, is eyes drooping, honey-colored, and liquid. His hand, the scarred back latticed with silver lines, descended to grace over the right eye, closing it before falling back to his side. His right eye opened once more, pale—it was the only color Mukuro could truly describe it as—the color of rain illuminated against the sky.

"There is no one waiting for me..."

.

**I am motherless and father wifeless by my design, by my mistake, by my stupidity, youth and weakness.**

**.**

What was left standing of the Vongola's guardians gathered around surgery room once more. Shamal finished his cigarette and stubbed it out against the wall. Hibari crinkled his nose at the desecration of what he believed to be his private property. Catching the Cloud Guardian's eye, the doctor-mafia shrugged.

"Not going to lie, it's invasive and it ain't going to be pretty. Kind of like a double-whammy you know? Putting a guy in a coma into another coma."

"Will he be alright?"

"Hard to say."

Gokudera let out a string of expletives. Shamal sighed, "It would have been easier if he was actually... you know, not in a coma."

"Why won't he wake up?" Rambo asked, his eyes tearing.

_Because he doesn't want to_

"Kufufufufufu..."

Everyone except Reborn, Chrome and Hibari jumped as the illustrious Mist Guardian made his appearance in the waiting room. He walked past them with a trident in his hand; he shared a meaningful look with the former prefect before they broke contact with a reluctant nod. Though Sawada Tsunayoshi did not know what had passed between them, he couldn't help but shiver at the clinical coldness of their operations. Before anyone or anything could stop him, Mukuro stepped through the surgery room doors.

.

**I regret that I wasted the life you bestowed upon me**

**.**

Yamamoto's eyes glowed in frightful blues and violets. The Rain Guardian was indeed powerful in comparison to the rest of his attribute family, but to Mukuro, that power simply wasn't enough for the Japanese man to take the title of a guardian. As metal ground against metal and sparks flew forth not wholly unlike those of the 10th Vongola's, he idly wondered why of all people had he, Hibari and Yamamoto been grouped together in the same attribute family.

He thought of Lal Mirch who had disappeared into the unknowns when Cornello was announced either missing or dead. The holder of the corrupted blue pacifier had once been a rain attribute had she not? Before she had failed to become one of the rainbow children, she was the 9th's Rain Guardian. Before her wave energy had split in two, mist and cloud, she had been of the rain family. What did that make the rain attributes—did it make them the precedents for the cloud and mist energies? Was rain something primal, less defined, less—everything? But that did not make sense, if rain attributes were made up of halves of cloud and mist, would that not make them more powerful?

And he began to think of possibilities...

Mukuro slid down to his knees and shoved his elbow forward. His trident, formerly occupied with pinning Yamamoto's sword to the floor, swung forward and smacked the Rain Guardian in the face. Surprised, Yamamoto stepped backwards snapping his arm forward to cleave at the illusionist's breast. Mukuro bent backwards easily, kicking his legs up and bouncing back to spear the swordsman's right wrist against the newly constructed wall behind him. Yamamoto let out a grunt, dropping his katana. The oriental sword dropped, hilt first. There was a strange glint to the man's eyes then Mukuro realized—_maybe you are different..._

But not enough to make a difference

The wall dissolved. Yamamoto dropped to the floor, crying out as he landed on his broken wrist. Mukuro clicked his tongue at the display, his trident fading and the fierce indigo flames returning to the ring on his finger. He extended a hand, kneeling down to see eye to eye with the swordsman. Yamamoto stared at him with a glassy gaze, mouth parted in shock as from finger tips to his face, Mukuro _changed_.

"You should know better." The Rain Guardian let out a miserable whine, trembling as Sawada Tsunayoshi's hand curled against his black hair. Mukuro felt a modicum of bitterness at the other man's compliance. Then he shook his head, spitting out a calm chuckle to the side. "Fu... I can't let you stay." Honey met the color of sunset in the Sky Guardian's eyes. A smile tugged at the ends of Tsuna's—Mukuro's—lips.

"Come with me."

Yamamoto shook his head—_no_—frozen to place, literally _glued_ as he tried to get away from the illusionist.

"We need you Yamamoto"—lied Tsunayoshi, Yamamoto thought. Then they were both standing, Mukuro- Tsuna in front of him, everyone else, everyone else in the world surrounding them staring at him with a hungry gaze. The shinai dropped into his hands, the bamboo surface stained with water. He didn't swing it, and it did not turn into the sword he had inherited from his father. He didn't attack and the rain never came to hide him in its deception. He didn't ask for help and he could no longer help the rest.

"We all need you."

.

**I regret not being able to tell you that I love you...**

**.**

Mukuro smiled artlessly as he stepped inside, scrutinized by the protective gazes of Yamamoto's father and the other guardians, subordinates around him. Coughing lightly into his fist, he glided between the surgeons around Yamamoto's head pushed them away. He pulled his glove off with his teeth and flexed his fingers, the cracking of joints oddly loud in the still air. Sighing softly, he pressed his hand over the Rain Guardian's face with the last of his breath. Then he closed his eyes, all was silent.

.

**...Mother**

**.**

The blade bit into the flesh and sank deep. There was a slight gasp as a cut was formed between the ribs and hollowed, briefly oxidized before filling with blood. It was the sound of relief he heard as his cheeks grazed the expensive jacket. The sound of release as his lips nuzzled the stiff collar around his neck. It was a desperate sound. It was a selfish sound, Mukuro hated it.

**(1)**It could just be me but the rain attribute seems largely useless. Yes they wash away the stains, grudges, whatever of battle so that the winners and the losers may start on a clean slate but for what? Are rain attributes simply over-sized peacekeepers?


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn no matter how much I would like to.

**Summary:** A raindrop can form a puddle which can grow into an ocean. Some, like the Cloud Guardian, the silver-haired swordsman of the Varia already knew this but others are just finding out how important the Rain Guardian is to them all.

**A.N.:** Thank you for your patience ;)

**Requiem for a Lullaby**

_"No." there is a squishing sound, the sound of something depressing, the sound of a blade sliding into the flesh and tearing into the tender folds, the sound of a slight gurgle as pain is registered._

_It is a selfish sound, Mukuro does not like it._

_"Why..."_

_Yamamoto merely laughs and suddenly tightens his grip on the false-Vongola's shoulders as his voice turns into pained keening._

_"...You are kinder than you think"_

**_I don't want to hear that from you_******

The glove drops from his mouth.

-x-

Yamamoto flat lined.

Mukuro found himself standing in the middle, the glove on the floor, one hand still clasped over Yamamoto's eyes. He bled from his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. Surrounded by a sea of scrubs, it wasn't until he was forcefully pulled away that he realized that the blood wasn't his—it was Yamamoto's. With Shamal commanding the surgeons like a drill sergeant, the illusionist was delivered safe into the arms of his protégés where they tried to wipe the blood away and smeared it all across his face. He blinked, still reeling, his eye spinning, breath thin, and copper swirls across his tongue.

Vongola's silver-haired demolition's expert struck out with a vengeful hand and twisted it against the Mist Guardian's throat. Mukuro swallowed sharply as he was hauled to his feet, a fist striking the air where it should have struck bone and smashed it in. He expelled oxygen from his mouth, the same that they were trying to inflate the Rain Guardian's lungs with. Gokudera could only shriek out his frustrations as they tried to bind Yamamoto back into the physical realm.

Mukuro shuddered, everything suddenly too loud. He pressed his palms over his ears and bowed his head.

Not for the first time in his life, he prayed.

-x-

_Yamamoto's eyes rolled wildly in their sockets, perceiving each and everyone as an enemy as they approached, crowding him against Mukuro's changed form. When they touched at chest level, the expensive silk of Tsunayoshi's suit briefly brushing up against the Rain Guardian's torn ones, the swordsman flinched and stepped back. The illusionist tried to hide the guise of hurt beneath his indigo dying-will flames. He couldn't begrudge him for being afraid but they couldn't stay in the dream world forever. Mukuro, still tired from the trials of the last mission, was weakening fast. Soon he would lose control of the dream characters and when he did..._

_"Come with me"—No_

_"If you won't," he tried again; chains shackled Yamamoto's hands and wrapped his fingers around the wooden shinai. Blue flames leapt up, a semblance of a swallow in the rain, a dog running swiftly through the ice. Mukuro grabbed the shinai and twisted it away from the swordsman's fingers. He pressed his hand against Yamamoto's heart, voice the Vongola's but the words entirely his own. "You will have to go through me." the shinai turned into a Japanese sword with no intervention from Yamamoto. His breath hitched slightly, his pupils dilated but his eyes at last upon**Sawada Tsunayoshi**'s face._

-x-

Mukuro's lips curled hours before he woke up. Perhaps he had known what would await him at the brink of consciousness. The illusionist was able to sleep thirteen hours before awaking; his right eye a placid six drawn out on a red background, his indigo eye pink-tinged and tired. There is laughter on his tongue even before he could sit up and he was reminded of the Rain Guardian who could—would—not stop before he was forced to and was in ICU in the opposite wing of the hospital as a consequence, resting under the watchful eyes of his father and mentors. Mukuro coiled his fingers, feeling electricity run through them with each movement. He nodded gratefully at the glass of water placed at the bedside table and he noted—exactly an inch out of his reach.

"What happened?"

"What do you think happened?" Mukuro said carefully, nails digging into the mattress. In a flash, Hibari was at his throat, silver tonfa blocking his airway as his head slammed against the wall. The illusionist saw stars as he gritted his teeth, clawing at the other's wrists as numbers spun anew, an attempt at possessing the Cloud Guardian's body.

Only, the other man was too powerful, too used to dealing with rogue mist attributes for fall for such a blatant attack. Hibari sneered, and pushed a little more. Mukuro choked, his tongue captive between his teeth as he lathered flakes of salt across the inner walls of his mouth. Then as soon as it had started it stopped, the former prefect let the Mist Guardian drop to his knees. Mukuro coughed, wincing every time is throat rolled to expel a vicious cough. Hibari sneered—_pathetic_—and proceeded to drive the end of his tonfa into the mattress. "Does it frustrate you..."—Feathers flew up, courtesy of the former prefect's generous contributions to the hospital. "...Knowing that a herbivore such as Yamamoto Takeshi has thwarted you at your own game."

Mukuro spat off to the side, his spittle landing on Hibari's shoe. The Cloud Guardian made a disgusted face and stepped backwards. The odd-eyed man wiped his mouth and sat up straight, his legs crossed and hanging from the side of the bed.

"From your actions, he is hardly the herbivore you claim him to be."

Hibari flashed his teeth, the thin lips curled over his canines.

"You underestimated him."

"As did you—" Mukuro bit back.

He narrowed his eyes, "...you knew this would happen"

"Perhaps," Hibari conceded, tipping his head slightly as he let his arms fall back to his side. "Perhaps I did not want to see another set of fangs wasted on grazing."

"This was just a test." Mukuro echoed warily,

"Life is usually a series of just-tests." Hibari agreed,

"What are you trying to prove?"

"That he is worth saving."

The answer was prompt enough, clean-cut and straight-forwards in an almost refreshing way for a person in the world of blood and politics. But Mukuro smiled, looking as though he was sucking on something bitter.

"Why do people lie Hibari-san?"

"To hide, to hurt,"

"Or to protect."

"Foolishness, if he truly wished to protect Sawada he would have awoken already."

The illusionist broke out into laughter,

"Fukukuu... why such interest in the Rain Guardian?"

"Because I hate being in debt."

-x-

The tenth head of the Vongola family, Sawada Tsunayoshi was walking towards room 303 when he saw the senior Yamamoto slip out of his son's room. The man looked as though he had aged overnight by about twenty years. The wrinkles, usually kept away by boisterous grin and laughter, had come back full-force and creased his brow and the laced tender folds around his jaw. There were bags under his eyes that he hadn't seen before—but weren't they the one and the same as he had given Yamamoto the Rain Guardian to team up with Hibari Kyoya on the Angelo-assignment?

The door clicked shut smoothly and with a start, Tsuna realized that he was in the way of oncoming doctors and nurses. Swerving towards the wall, he carefully followed the man to a balcony where a cigarette butts littered the floor. Not all were the result of the Storm Guardian's chain smoking. Stepping past the ashen cigarettes, Tsuna quietly observed the man who was taking a smoke out on the balcony. Yamamoto Tsuyoshi exhaled white smoke. Much like the dragons of old that breathed flames and belched lightning from their jaws.

Hyper intuition—as useful as it was running an entire legion of mafia families and associates, he hated being hyper intuitive. He would never be able to believe in small, white lies, again, never be able to believe especially when the life of his guardian was at stake.

"Ah Tsuna." The man broke out into a familiar smile when the boy-turned-man joined in near the railing. A cigarette hung languidly between the scarred, bruised, weathered, stained fingers. Tsuna frowned, trying to picture the Rain Guardian in a place where his father was but couldn't and began to berate himself thinking that he was jinxing the swordsman into an early death. "It's alright, I've made my choices. But that doesn't mean Takeshi has to suffer for them."

The blackened end glowed with the intensity of an almost-flame and was carelessly extinguished against the rail. It left a burn mark on the soft steel and trailed smoky whirls down the sides.

-x-

The sun was setting, pooling all of its radiance in the Rain Guardian's lap. For once, the swordsman looked at peace. It seemed as though the almost-death, the shooting, the betrayal, Nocosta, Millefiore, had never happened. The light cast a healthy glow back into the man's skin and erased the hardship formed around the base of his eyes. The man's breathing was easier, rhythmic; as though he was murmuring something to a friend they could not see. His box animal—the rain swallow—dozed in the warmth, its normally blue feathers long gone pale to the color of bone-whiteness. He'd have to mention it to Ryohei later—to see if Kangaryuu could find it in herself to nestle a bird in her stomach pouch. But in the present, the Vongola sat, admiring the sunset through the windows.

It was a nice day; it was a very nice day. It was one of those days Yamamoto would ditch homework in favor of playing ball in the park. With an excuse of getting him back at the table, Tsuna would follow, and eventually the grumbling Gokudera would chase after them in the name of being the self-proclaimed right hand of Vongola's tenth. Reborn would find them slacking off and punish them for impudence, but they would Yamamoto's throw, admiring its strength and speed, clapping—even Gokudera—when it disappeared off into the horizon.

"Yamamoto..."

The swallow chirped—or did swallows chirp? Did they cry? Did they sing?—and shook itself. Tsuna laced his fingers through the swordsman's calloused ones, periodically squeezing to find comfort in it. Yamamoto did not squeeze back and the Sky Guardian swallowed back a sob pressing the side of his cheek and lips against the silver-lined fingers. "I know now, it's okay..." the heart monitor continued its monotone and the Rain Guardian, his whispers. "I don't care, you're my guardian, you're my family..." he set his forehead down on Yamamoto's chest, close to the throat where the vibrations were the strongest and wove a song in Tsuna's heart.

"I'm so sorry"

There was nothing Yamamoto could have done wrong in his eyes, in his families eyes, nothing. But somewhere down the line he had—they had all—taken the smiles and the rain for granted. Nothing grew without rain, nothing. And now under the endless skies, they dreamed and waited, knowing that the clouds would clear, the sun would rise, the storm would come and eventually the rain as well but nothing would be the same. So perhaps it wasn't that the rain was weak but had remained so constant they had regarded as the norm and that was where their folly began.

-x-

_"You..."_

The air was hollow, just empty enough to hang the letters in bleak stillness. His word reverberated, seeming to hit the walls and bounce back before entering their ears. The gravity of his word seemed to have lessened because of it, the usual harsh inflections had been replaced with something almost timid—something what the Cloud Guardian Hibari Kyouya would have called 'herbivorous'.

Bristling, the swordsman stood while his blade shone madly in the hospital's florescent lighting. He observed that Yamamoto Tsuyoshi still had the gall to smile back, even when the edge of his sword brushed against the tempting pulse on the older man's neck.

_So much like his son..._

"Ah you must be Superbi Squalo, I've heard much about you. You were the one who defeated Satou Kenta**(1)** aren't you? The idiot, I told him to ask for help... "

Tsuyoshi glanced down briefly at the cool metal before turning to his son and his friend's side. The sword made a shallow gash against the firm line of his neck. The blood seeped through the two folds of flesh but the man didn't seem to care. On the contrary, he smudged the blood over his collarbone as his hand came off wet and tinged pink. It shouldn't have surprised him—Squalo knew—the man worked in the sushi business, blood was his business, and even before that. The blood should not have sparked such an interest in the eldest _Shigeru Sounen _user.

Squalo smirked,

"Che, the brat is still too soft..."

The sushi shop owner said nothing and spread a spare blanket over the sleeping Vongola. Squalo went on, "The Rain Guardian is supposed to absolve the rest of all sins; do you know who prays for the Rain Guardian?" The Varia assassin crept close, his head almost bowed against the former informant's ear.

"The others he leaves behind, the raindrops still falling through space."

The smirk turned into a resentful hiss,

_"You wouldn't understand. You who tried to shatter the tranquility through propagation and illusions..."_

**(1)**Satou Kenta, a made up name for the Shigure Sounen user Squalo defeated before the Varia incident


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn no matter how much I would like to.

**Summary:** With Yamamoto possibly lost to them forever, the rest must decide who to take up the mantle of the fallen Rain Guardian.

**A.N.:** Happy Birthday Mukuro! Sadly, you only get one scene. But at least you have a scene unlike the poor unmentioned also not mentioned on this note :D

.

**KusajishiFuktaicho** – glad you're enjoying it. Myself, I just like torturing Yamamoto for no good reason :K

**Requiem for a Lullaby**

_Winds ruffled almost playfully—like a stray hand—through his hair. He winced as his bangs were swept into his eyes and batted it away in vain. His fingers curled, netting the loose strands back above his head. When he raised his eyes, he found himself in a wooded area, a forest of green bamboo and stone slabs that stood like solemn monoliths. A graveyard, but why was he there? He traced the deeply engraved kanji with a finger, marveling at the love and care that had gone into etching out the name and the last messages into the stone. Incense burned slowly—sleepily—with its tendrils of smoke winding all around the grave marker. The ground beneath his feet was littered with dried leaves but firm, a perfect place to bury a body—if there was one to begin with. Shaking his head free of such grim thoughts, he followed a little ways away down a well-used and winding road out of the thickest of the bamboo. He frowned when the soft-smelling incense gave away to sickly bitter and sweet tobacco, and at the heart of it, the Rain Guardian Yamamoto Takeshi._

_The swordsman sat lazily by the temple, his sword propped against the wooden pillar behind him, his legs crossed and feet kicking idly. In his left hand he held a long pipe, the kind that one would normally see in folktales and nowhere else. The other hand peeked out from the loose collar opened to the center of his chest. The right sleeve flapped emptily in the breeze like the panicked flight of a raven or a magpie. A swallow—would have been appropriate for Yamamoto but it didn't fit the image, not right there at least. The young man kept his place, silent and serene, his black-and-slate yukata fitting him regally. _

_It was a sanctuary—Tsuna realized, tranquility that couldn't be found in real life in between missions and burials and funerals. Yamamoto and his cheerful countenance could offer them tranquility, but no one had thought to offer the Rain Guardian any. The same Rain Guardian who had seemed so indestructible, forced into something beautiful broken just to gain some semblance of quiet. _

"_But why didn't you ask? Why didn't you ask us for help?" Tsunayoshi shouted, projecting all his frustration into a cape of orange-lit flames. Yamamoto looked thoughtfully at the dying-will flames, smoke still drifting from his pipe into pale clouds. The Sky Guardian knelt, burying his face into the other guardian's lap. Without hesitation, a hand came up to stroke the light brown hair. Tsuna began to cry, his tears evaporating from his cheeks long before they came in contact with the silken yukata. And still Yamamoto did not speak, seemingly still lost in the expanse of the temple by the graveyard._

-x-

"Found anything yet?"

"Nothing, shit these records are old as fuck—_hey_ _there are such things as computers you know_?!"

Lambo tuned the following expletives out as he dutifully flipped through the dusty files. The archivist had been kind enough to grant them access plus two flashlights. Gokudera had initially asked for a bigger source of light but gave up when he was met with scandalized looks from the two archivists that worked there. The Storm Guardian snorted scornfully as with a snap, the ladder broke from the weight of Vongola's Lightning Guardian and a container full of decades old files. The paper went everywhere and within, the dust which soon had the silver-haired demolitions expert coughing alongside his younger colleague.

Lambo began to sniffle and Gokudera left him to nurse his 'wounds'. Muttering about idiots, morons, crybabies and baseball under his breath, he heaved the now cracked container box onto an abandoned metal desk and shone light on the faded tabs. To his despair he discovered that sometime between filing date and then had been a leak and the storage unit had been used to counter it. Though it may have had been a necessary sacrifice to the under-paid, under-appreciated office personnel working in the archives, it did nothing for the thunderous mood the man was developing. Perhaps sensing the storm up ahead, Lambo ceased his crying and began to meekly peel files off of each other and identify the method of organization. The containers in the front had been alphabetized; the ones near the end were randomized.

"How am I supposed to find them among the thousand plus one Yamamotos**(1)**? The bastard better appreciate this, of course I'm only doing this for the 10th so there is no point for the idiot to..." When they were organized sufficiently enough to satisfy his obsessive compulsive disorder, he set them on the ground and put them away. He figured, the least the archivist could do was spend a better part of the hour simply putting the boxes back where they belong. "Alright dumb cow, where's the next... oy stop messing with the evidence boxes!" Pouting, the Bovino heir pulled himself away from the 'interesting stuff' in the cold cases aisle to present Gokudera with another round of 'Yamamoto' files.

Gokudera palmed his face and muttered a small prayer.

-x-

Even through Yamamoto's tranquil flames, Sawada Tsunayoshi did not hesitate to awake when a stranger stepped into his room. Though there were more men under the Vongola's banner than one could count within a lifetime, Tsuna remembered each and every face that passed through the family stronghold. But he did not remember the man before him who was obviously foreign and did nothing to hide it. A Varia member then—he felt Yamamoto Tsuyoshi tense from the other side of the bed. Giving Takeshi's hand a lingering squeeze, he ushered the man out of the room to speak with him out in the hallway.

"What is it?"

The man announced himself as Nevio Aggi. As he had suspected, he was a man stationed under the independent assassination team known as the Varia, more specifically Superbi Squalo.

"Signor Squalo is waiting for you 10th."

No doubt that the 2nd Sword Emperor was throwing a fit at that moment.

"Where is he?"

"He's in the conference room."

"The conference..." Feeling the stilted peace of Yamamoto's aura leaving him, Tsuna frowned. "Who else is there?"

"The external advisor Basilicum, Rain Guardian's Lieutenant Cecelia Aquati, another of his subordinates Mochida Yori**(2)**, Signor Reborn and..."

"Reborn?"

"_Si signor_," Nevio replied blandly, "he requested the meeting"

-x-

Gokudera tore a blank page out of a seemingly nondescript file, crumpled it into a ball and threw it at the least of his problems at the moment. Lambo dropped the file he was reading with a surprised yelp as the paper ball became impaled on one of his horns. Characteristically closing one eye and keeping the other at half mast, he turned towards the silver-haired man, a finger awkwardly scratching his chin.

"Make yourself useful idiot cow!"

"But it's boring!" Lambo whined,

"Nobody said that the life of a mafia would be exciting." The Storm Guardian snarled, creasing the cream-and-yellow pages with a careless hand.

"There's nothing in those files."

"How would you know, there's 69428 more files to process."

"You're making that up." The Bovino accused, throwing handfuls of paper into the air.

Gokudera slapped Lambo's head, causing the teen to break out into tears.

"Fine!" Gokudera finally said in disgust, "Do what you want!"

"There are Yamamoto's in these files too you know."

"Yeah, because the idiot had to be born with the dirt-commonest name possible in all of Japan."

"Honestly," Lambo complained, "why can't we look in the cold case files. If Yamamoto-nii's dad was in the informant business, he would be here somewhere right?"

That actually made sense, which was why Gokudera stretched out the poor boy's face before yelling loudly that their destination was the police station.

-x-

The double doors gave away with little resistance. Before him sat the Arcobaleno Reborn near the head of the table while the Varia's rain attribute, Superbi Squalo sat on the opposing side. CEDEF's Basilicum was two seats down. Mochida Yori, Tsuna's tormentor from his younger days, fidgeted nervously in his seat beside the Italian brunette. The rain squad's lieutenant Cecelia sat quietly at the end of the table, perfectly composed save for the hint of color on her cheeks. Paying them no heed, the Vongola's 10th head turned towards the instigator of the entire meeting.

"Reborn."

The sun attribute 'rainbow child's' face was flushed, sweats gathering on the tip of his nose. The man was sick and had been for a long time. One couldn't help but admire the dedication he had for the ancient mafia clan.

"These are your new Rain Guardian candidates, choose wisely."

Tsuna clenched his fists and closed his eyes.

-x-

"You knew everything didn't you?" Mukuro whispered in a slightly awed voice as he let his finger brush up against the Rain Guardian's cheeks. "You knew everything but decided to play the fool, quite an accomplished illusionist yourself." The Mist Guardian cocked his head as though to listen to an answer that did not escape the hissing lullaby of the oxygen tube. "If I may," Mukuro said lightly, seating himself beside the bed. A thumb pulled the delicate lids back to reveal a ring of liquid mercury. "I need to borrow your body Yamamoto Takeshi."

"Not so fast..."

-x-

"No."

The four gathered began to murmur amongst each other and Squalo drawled loudly that the meeting was a waste of time. Reborn leaned back into his chair, his breath rattling on the tip of his tongue.

"No? What do you mean no?"

"I mean no. Abort the plan, we're staying."

"Dame-Tsuna..."

"This is my fault."

"It was his choice to stay in that blasted crawlspace of his."

"Well then this is my choice!" Silence fell in the conference room. Squalo's silver head finally looked up in mild interest. "Maybe if I had been a good friend... maybe if I had noticed... you're right maybe Yamamoto was _weak_... I don't know but until I find out I'm not leaving him. I won't leave him with the thought that maybe I just left him there to die, I won't Reborn."

Tsuna continued quietly, "You chose him, you can't deny his strength"

Reborn sighed, "People change."

"Not that much. Despite everything, he's still Yamamoto"

-x-

_Once upon a time, there was a boy, a girl, a man, a woman, old people, animals, the wildflowers and the trees and the world. But this is not a story about the world in general; it is about a specific boy. Perhaps it is not even about him for his story continues through his bloodline and the generation so that the tale would never end. Maybe this story is about the story that he continues and passes onto his children. But the fact is that one of the more important subplots begins with him. _

_It isn't about the typhoon that helped him create shintoku no ame (__篠突く雨__) though admittedly that was an important part of who he is. It goes further back, not quite too far, but far enough for him to realize that he was dissatisfied with his life. And so this boy, not quite a man, heir to the deadliest sword technique in all of East, abandoned the life of fishing in his little village and ran away to join the local yakuza. _

_He was young, he was charming, and he was strong. He made a name for himself among the thousand thugs and other runaway boys that made up his ragtag group. He went into the annaiya business, collecting data and selling information to those who could afford it. He became sought by many, recruited by many and unlike many, could defend himself using an ancient art he learned a long time ago. In a way, he was no better than a killer for hire. He didn't understand that yet, the boy who was not quite a man, not then at least._

_Then he met her. She was an Italian, an inch or so taller than him. She was pretty but intimidating. She did not submit to the reputation he had garnered for himself over the years. She had crossed the seas looking for only one thing. She was Vongola's woman and made sure he knew it. But things happen, they always do, they fell in love, the woman from Vongola and the boy-not-yet-man. _

_He didn't realize then, he didn't understand then, what gift it was to find his other half. _

_._

**(1)**Yamamoto is one of the top 10 most common surnames in Japan

**(2)**Mochida was the bully from the kendo club who fought against Tsuna for Kyoko. Yori is a randomly generated name given to him


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn no matter how much I would like to.

**Summary:** With Yamamoto possibly lost to them forever, the rest must decide who to take up the mantle of the fallen Rain Guardian.

**A.N.:** Happy 4th of July to those of us who celebrate it. Whether you're the neighbors who've been blowing shit up since 9 am this morning or people arranging barbeques on their lawns, enjoy the holidays!

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**KusajishiFuktaicho** – Gokudera seems to be the type to have OCD. He's so high-strung at times. High-strung but pretty. Very high-maintenance. If all six guardians were to share an apartment, I can see him picking up after the rest, doing dishes, etc.

I read your fic, I loved your characterization of Goku-! xD sadly I'm not much of a reviewer and 8059 was never my thing... sorry Gokudera, no Takeshis for you... hmm maybe 5980 :P

**Tokio Magic** – Considering my track record, once a month isn't too bad right...?

**Requiem for a Lullaby**

A little boy, a fruit of their poisonous union, something they had selfishly wrought to create a foundation for their relationship. Their young son, the man who would be known as Vongola's Rain Guardian in the future, something fate had given to them to attest to their selfishness. If Yamamoto Tsuyoshi had known of the tragedy in the makings, he would have never allowed himself to kiss her on the pier where they decided to abandon their former lives and run.

Beside him, a man puffed on his cigar lazily, dragging the embers from its burn end. The acrid smoke reddened his eyes and made them water, but he sat patiently as he waited for his informant to speak. Peals of laughter rose from the playground as a honey-eyed boy threw a ball into the air and caught it in his hands. Neighborhood children milled around him, clamoring for a chance to play catch. A little girl, her hair a short bob, made a face and claimed that she had been promised the first throw. She was going to be a firecracker when she grew up—he thought.

"They're looking for you." The man murmured quietly, exhaling smoke through his nostrils. His breathing was slightly off and he heaved every third or fourth breath. If Yamamoto noticed, he did not mention it and nodded as a hint to go on. Pausing briefly the informant parted the cigar reluctantly from his chapped lips. He looked at the shorter, stouter, but deadlier man beside him and pinned him with an irate glance. He shook his head, his shoulders shuddering in a muted amusement.

"You stole from the Vongola," the man hacked, slapping his thigh. "Did you expect any less?"

**-x-**

"_What's happening?"_

_Giannini had set up headquarters in the security room of the Namimori General Hospital. He spun around in his floating chair, coming face to face with the Vongola's Cloud Guardian. Swallowing down the impressive ball of fear that had knotted his throat, the engineer pointed at the radar and the adjoining screen next to it and stammered out,_

"_Unknown signals, a-p-p-p-pproaching, fast."_

_The former prefect leaned down, where bright green dots signaled movement in the radar. The cameras that were sat up outside saw nothing but they wouldn't see anything for at least five minutes when whatever that was coming for them entered the two-mile zone around the hospital. _

_Hibari swiftly stood up and flipped open the panic button case. _

"_Notify me when you get visual." _

_The security guards surrounding them all saluted,_

"_Yes sir!"_

**-x-**

"...And Matsuda said that his father has this _big_..."

Yamamoto Takeshi skipped a meter ahead, turning around every now and then to regale his father about the friends he had made on the playground that day. It was mundane things—Tsuyoshi knew—that every boy in Japan had the opportunity to experience. It was the things everyone he knew in his current incarnation dreamed of escaping, but he couldn't think of anything more precious than the stream of babbles that flowed from his son's mouth.

"...Kaori-chan kept hitting everyone even though it wasn't her turn and _nee tousan_, why are girls so strange?"

"Better not let your mother hear that Takeshi." Tsuyoshi replied automatically. "Women are often sensitive and proud creatures."

Takeshi nodded sagely at this response, walking backwards to see his father better against the sunset.

"Yeah, mom is so _neat_—but she likes to play in the dirt just as much as I do! Except she didn't like it when I asked her to in the playground."

"Gardening is hardly playing Takeshi."

"But she liked the worm I caught for her the other day. She said Mr. Worm could live in the tomato patch because he makes them grow more better."

"Worms eh,"

"Yup,"

"You'll have to introduce Mr. Worm to me sometime."

"Okay!"

**-x-**

"Not so fast..."

_Mukuro raised his hands mockingly._

"_You..." he laughed, the number six in his right eye enlarging to turn everything pitch black. Yamamoto Tsuyoshi, who stood behind the illusionist, did not notice the change in color but felt the terrible power quiver in the air. "Did this to him?" He tilted his head back as the blade dug in further, causing a violet welt on his neck. It burst and the blood overflowed past the surface of the blade down his neck. "I wonder..." the Vongola's Mist Guardian sighed, his hands dropping down to his side. "What happens when the illusion breaks..."_

**-x-**

Azzurra had wanted him to pick up eggs for some western concoction called _crepe_. He did not like his son indulging in such sweets but decided to humor his life. Despite being called out for her different appearances everywhere, she had risen up to the challenge of motherhood quite marvelously and Tsuyoshi wanted to express his appreciation through small favors if not words.

Takeshi was quite a ways ahead of him now and despite the danger of the mafia looming over his family, the older Yamamoto let it be. He knew that the old women sunning themselves around the houses next door would keep a hawk-like watch on the neighborhood children, half-_gaijin_**(1)** or not. And he knew that even with information, picking out Takeshi among dozens of other children would be harder than it appeared to a stranger.

He thanked the shop owner and went on his way. He caught up to the boy but soon parted when they passed the gates to their home. He saw Yamamoto sprint up the stairs of their house and run in, slamming the door in the process. He winced but saw that the door had not broken off its hinges from the five-year-old's abuse. He would have to speak to his son about the virtues of silence—and he hurried up the stairs.

What he heard, smelled, saw, felt in the next few seconds would stay with him for the rest of his life.

**-x-**

_Fortunately, the police records were all digital thanks to the tireless efforts made by a certain prefect during his time at Namimori. Unfortunately, this would be the last of their luck in a long time. Search for Yamamoto Takeshi came to a dead end within minutes, Yamamoto Tsuyoshi in mere seconds. With a sudden sense of déjà vu, Smoking-Boom Hayato combed the database for Tsuyoshi's wife and came up with one name, Yamamoto "Azzurra". Despite his heritage and his childhood living in the land of the rising sun, Gokudera wasn't completely experienced with its naming traditions. However, he knew that if the name was written in katakana, the chances were that the name was foreign in origin. _

_Yamamoto Azzurra was another blank page, but hadn't there been a talk of the Yamamotos' involvement with the Vongola?_

"_Oy dumb-cow, I need you to look for someone with the name 'A-zu-ra', use any spelling variation. I want the woman found."_

**-x-**

"_Don't come in here Takeshi!!"_

He was at the door shaking his flip-flops off of his foot when he heard gunshots. He dropped the eggs on the floor. All of them cracked, some bouncing out of the bag to trail yellow yolk all across the hardwood floor. But he paid all this no heed as he burst into the kitchen where he knew his wife and son were. He saw the brunette stranger at first, starring daggers at him with amber eyes. Then he saw red, the kind of red no amount of soap or detergent could get rid of in his lifetime. There was the redness splattered across the wall beside him, red seeping into the calluses on his bare foot, red spreading across his wife's torso as she breathed her last, red covering his son's skin as he lay against the floor caught beneath his mother.

A normal person would have seen to their family first. A normal person would have seen to it that he got his wife what was needed, whatever the price their attacker demanded. A normal person would have seen to it that their son be somewhere safe, away from the carnage, the bullets, the blood, and madness. But in the light of what had just transpired before him, he couldn't afford to be a man first.

"Yarazu no ame!" There was a dagger he carried around always, a momento from the time when he was younger, stupider, prouder—_stronger_. He ripped it out from his belt and tossed it into the air, the familiar movements of Shigure Souen embedded deeply in his psyche. When he had quit the life of an underground informant, he had gone back to the small fishing village in the middle of nowhere. His teacher, in the midst of teaching the few that had remained the art of the blade had nodded to him as though he had expected him and told him to be proud and claim his legacy.

His legacy, heirloom, heritage, the _Shigure Kintoki_, still inside his bedroom closet and too far away to be of any help. His legacy, his beautiful son, his love, his family, were here, now and in desperate need of his skills. He kicked the knife before it dropped to the ground. The blade flew true and embedded itself down to the hilt in the other man's chest. The stranger—not so strange, after all, he knew where he had come from—stumbled backwards, stifling cry as his hand flew up to where the knife stuck out from between his ribs. His head hit the cabinets, cracking the glass pane and shattering the dishes and cups lining the shelves. He fell to his knees, barely rolling sideways in time to prevent falling down on the knife. The man curled up in pain, grinding the side of his gun against the palm of his hand.

Reassured that the enemy had been subdued for the moment, he turned his attention back to his family.

"Takeshi...! Azzurra? Azzurra!!" He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her off of their son. He hugged her close, hand attempting to cup the base of her skull where it met the fragile pillar of her neck. Her eyes rolled listlessly vainly attempting to lock on the image of their only son. Spittle flew out of her mouth as her tongue began to writhe between her teeth. Bright specks of foam framed her lips. Her jaws clamped down and Tsuyoshi saw the tip of her tongue fall off as she began to seize, her back arching as her limbs suddenly grew stiff.

So focused on the throes of his dying wife he did not notice the stranger getting up from the ruins of their kitchen.

**-x-**

"_How close are they?" Sawada Tsunayoshi asked without a preamble as the family's Cloud Guardian stalked in with his tonfa drawn. _

"_Five miles, closing fast. Giannini will alert us when he gains visual."_

_Ryohei punched the wall in frustration. _

"_Evacuating everyone right now would be too extreme."_

"_It matters little," Hibari said flatly at the Sun Guardian. "Fighting was inevitable."_

"_They know we're not at full strength."_

_Hibari's lips twisted in a semblance of a smile._

"_Perhaps you should have listened to the baby when you had the chance." Tsuna presents him with a disgusted look. The 10__th__ head of the Vongola never got over his initial fear of the former prefect but at the very least, Hibari can say with confidence that he has seen the man develop over the years and thankfully with a somewhat solid spine. "Once the two idiots return from their investigation, we will be able to set up a formation to better protect the hospital."_

_Ryohei is on the brink of shouting 'extreme' before he stops, fist hanging in midair._

"_Say," he frowns, tanned face creasing. "Where's Mukuro?"_

**-x-**

Takeshi observed all this from the floor, red covering his face and body. There might have been screaming—he could have been the one screaming—but he couldn't hear it because the screams were never real. There might have been an afterthought to do so—after all, police came if you were loud enough and your neighbor nosy enough—but nothing manifested beyond a dying whimper. Takeshi's head rolled on the linoleum floor, like a jack-in-the-box with the coiled spring all but spent. He stared from one red hand to another, eyes drooping before widening, pinprick like pupils like faint points that drank the light of the dying sun. He flinched—though he was dimly aware of it—when the stranger shot his father twice in the back as he had done his mother.

"Momma?" He choked down a wet sob, finally turning his head sideways to see the prone figure of his father splayed across his mother's body in a protective embrace. "Dad?"

"Sorry kid," the stranger finally said, taking off his hat and pushing it down on Takeshi's face so that it would cover his eyes. "The mafia does not take kindly to bastards and traitors."

Takeshi sat up, the hat trapped firmly in his hands like some paper bird that he refused to let go. He got to his knees, wobbly like a newborn fawn's, colt's, one or another four-legged beast's that was not his own. He took a step, odd tingling climbing up his ankles like a parasitic ivy. He dragged the other foot behind him in the scarlet paint that had once been his mother's blood. He shrieked,

"You... you leave them alone!"

"Can it kid," the man kicked Tsuyoshi off and rolled him on his back. The Japanese man groaned in pain, blood dripping out from his nose. Blearily he opened his bloodshot eyes and pointed an accusatory finger at the man's trousers. The man shrugged carelessly and took two fingers to Azzurra's pale neck. He turned her head left and right and satisfied that he couldn't find a pulse, closed her eyes with a small farewell.

"You..." the swordsman spat, he flailed his arm unable to get up. "You..."

"This is a goodbye Yamamoto Tsuyoshi."

"_...Reborn...!!!"_

Reborn froze, an inward shudder rippling through him.

"You little..." he clenched his teeth trying to draw out the dagger from his hips but unable to. How had the kid managed to sneak up on him nevertheless bury a four-inch blade deep into the sockets that cradled his internal organs? Why did his limbs feel so heavy, so slow, so drugged?

He concentrated a small burst of sun energy to the affected area and let it pulse until the odd blue energy cleared. It was like hanging out with Colonello sometimes, as trigger-happy as the blonde was; the rain attribute had a calming aura about him. It was one of few reasons the rather misanthropic hitman had kept up acquaintances with the COMBUSEN member. He took a deep breath and stared down at the frightened little boy before him. Azzurra's son, Azzurra's _bastard_—

"_Run Takeshi!"_

**(1)** Gaijin – a foreigner, an outsider

**(2)** Kouchi – a city in Shikoku.


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:** We've done this like 8 times now, read the previous chapters please

**Summary:** Time is running out for the Vongola's Rain Guardian. Still, among them are those who still believe...

**A.N.:** Yay, a second update all in the same month! The story is starting to pick up pace, Millefiore is here and time is running out for Yamamoto... hope everyone's been enjoying whatever freedom summer break (or not depending on where you are) has given/taken. If anyone has any questions regarding this chapter or this fic in general, I will be more than happy to answer.

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**KusajishiFuktaicho **– -laughs- I sympathize, I usually have to go over what I've written so that the next few chapters after have some sort of consistency to them. The story I've read was Staccatissimo by the way according to the purpliness of the link, gah I hate that color :/

**ImJustNutty **– Why yes I am enjoying it very much xD whether or not he'll wake up in time to make a difference (or something or another), eh who knows. I'm capricious that way :?

Thank you everyone else for reviewing-!!

**Requiem for a Lullaby**

He leaned his head back and sneered,

"Haven't you ever wondered how much of yourself is real?"

-x-

"_You're a rain attribute," Reborn stated quietly—almost __**sullenly**__—as though he had been cheated of something. It didn't matter, anyone who could have picked up the minor infraction in his voice were either dead or close to it. He cocked his head sideways, "and also something else." He smirked, wincing slightly as he drew out the dagger from his side and twirled it in his hand. "Come here Takeshi," The hitman swirled the foreign syllables in his mouth before resuming. "I want to see something." He held out a beckoning hand. Takeshi stood there and trembled in fear, anger, frustration, emotions unnamed as a warm trickle dampened his pants and soaked into his socks. "You want to save your parents right?"_

-x-

"Approximately 25 years ago, Azzurra Nicchi betrayed the Vongola Familigia by selling out to Kouchi's yakuza clan. Along with her, an informant went AWOL around the same time. The intelligence surmised that they were in it together. A retrieval team was assembled but we never heard from again. The CEDEF received a warning that they wished to disappear in peace and whoever came after them will meet the same end as the rest. After 4 years of uneasy truce, the 9th Vongola ordered a hit on Azzurra Nicchi also known as Yamamoto Azzurra as well as her spouse and accomplice Yamamoto Tsuyoshi."

"The hitman?"

"..."

"Spit it out Bovino."

"The sun-attribute arcobaleno Reborn."

-x-

"-bzzt- s..s....east wing secure!"

"West wing secure!"

"We -bzzt- have visual!"

"Millefiore" Hibari purred lightly, knuckles flexing around the handles of his tonfa.

Tsuna nodded and leaned into the microphone,

"First and the second squadron to the front and hold your positions, we have guests."

-x-

"_But I don't know how to help them."_

"_You don't need to, just..." _

_Reborn touched him and in that moment the blue light split in two—indigo and dark. The flames danced over the boy, one creating, the other devouring—fueling... beautiful. "__**Pretend...**__" the hitman's hand easily enveloped the child's own as it was placed over Yamamoto Tsuyoshi's fluttering chest. Takeshi flinched when he felt his hand sink into the warm flesh and blood. _

"_Though Azzurra Nicchi is lost to us there's still a part of you in her and I'd like to know that we can depend on you when the time comes..."_

_Takeshi closed his eyes_

-x-

"VOOOII!! Why aren't we in the front?!"

"Boss has asked all the rain attributes to become the first line of defense should the squadrons fail in driving the enemy away." Cecelia explained patiently as she twisted a B-grade rain-attribute ring on her index finger. Squalo scoffed as he toed the barrier that had been looped around the hospital. Should the need for them arise, all the rain attributes were to focus their flames into the individual ports to activate the barrier. Until reinforcement arrived, the barrier would keep opposing forces at bay—and leave rain attributes helpless if one—just _one_—Millefiore managed to get through.

"We're not fucking invalids."

"We are to stand in for the Rain Guardian Yamamoto Takeshi; this is not a matter of being a capable combatant."

"Fuck," the silver-haired rain-attribute spat. "No wonder the katana-brat wants to stay in a fucking coma."

-x-

"Why did you save me that day?"

Reborn opened his eyes.

The ventilator hissed in revulsion to his awakening. The sun-attribute arcobaleno made a face as he tried to wrap his mind around getting it off of his face. Surprisingly gentle, Tsuyoshi unhooked the oxygen mask from the man's face and placed it over his throat. Reborn attempted to wet his lips before declaring it a lost cause. Tsuyoshi offered the man a cup of water and he took it reluctantly, offering a flicker of teeth before soothing his dry throat.

_Mukuro_—Reborn murmured dryly, taking account of his surroundings.

"He's a strange sort of fellow," The swordsman admitted as he sat down, the hospital mattress sinking beneath the man's solid weight. "He saw... or at least claimed to see many things."

"Things." Reborn repeated baldly, hands squeezing the sheets lining the bed. His cheek flushed as his breathing quickly became labored. It wasn't kindness after all—there are hardly worse ways to die than by suffocation. In this illusion, there would be nothing to say that he hadn't died of his own accord, an _accident_—such a terrible word—easily overlooked in the times of crisis.

Tsuyoshi shook his head,

"Takeshi shouldn't have known how to do this." He gestured to himself loosely, letting the side of his hands brush up against the beige cloth as it swept down the length of his torso. "He shouldn't have known... why did you do it Reborn?"

"A rain attribute's greatest asset lies in their potential, not tranquility or sedation." Reborn grasped for a gun that was no longer there. He squinted at Tsuyoshi's blurred visage. "He meant _nothing_ to me."

"Ahh..." Tsuyoshi shook his head again, "you loved her too."

-x-

The first and second squadrons were being torn apart.

The guardians had yet to assemble, one unconscious, two missing in action and the remaining three scattered across the hospital grounds. They expected Hibari to lead the offense but the normally aloof Cloud Guardian was nowhere to be seen. Scowling, Squalo kicked the ground and scattered gravel over the lines of the barrier. At the current rate, they would have to activate the rain barrier ahead of schedule. Whatever the plan was to be, the second sword emperor did not like it at all.

Cecelia lowered the binoculars from her face,

"That is Millefiore's Rain Guardian Bluebell; odd... she was never reported to be a frontline attacker..."

Basil grimaced uncharacteristically as he drew his sword and knelt before an open port.

"They know we're a guardian short."

"We'll need to put up the barrier soon." Mochida commented nervously as he took a step backwards.

Squalo tossed his hair back,

"And that's exactly what they want us to do."

"Wait, Squalo!"

"Fuck the brat and his orders, if he can't put rain attributes to good use. He has no fucking business ordering us around!"

-x-

_Yamamoto Tsuyoshi breathed again. And in the haze of pain he reached out and grasped the still warm hand of his wife, unaware of what had just transpired. They had been ambushed he remembered—Reborn!—his wife shot, her blood covering everything in the kitchen she was so proud of maintaining, body memory of the third form of shigure souen, the bullets, then his son, his son... Takeshi! _

"_Well..." a familiar voice murmured. There might have been mild amusement coloring the words, "that was unexpected."_

-x-

"Where are the others?"

Tsunayoshi closed the blinds shut and turned towards the two guardians. Chrome immediately lowered her violet eyes and began to fidget, smoothing her skirt down and pulling at her fingers. Ryohei in contrast stood still, though there was a tick in his jaw that jumped whenever he wasn't looking at the pale-haired man directly. When no answer was forthcoming, the 10th Vongola pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. The Vongola's Mist Guardian, or rather the main Mist Guardian, squeaked out that Mukuro was busy in yet another futile attempt at reviving the Rain Guardian.

"I thought we told him to stop," Tsuna sighed, though he appreciated the effort, he would have rather if the illusionist had waited for a more convenient time. The two guardians politely looked the other way. "Never mind then, Hibari? Lambo? Where is Gokudera anyways?" If anything, the Storm Guardian could always be counted on to be somewhere in the brunette's voice range. No one would have been surprised if the bomber had a GPS tracking system wired to their current head of the family. Of all the times Tsuna had wished for the man to stop his overprotectiveness—obsession—this was not one of them.

"Hibari-san... is probably somewhere in the hospital grounds."

That was understandable, the aloof Cloud Guardian was probably fighting already—though that didn't correspond with the fact that their first and second squadron were being slaughtered and the rain attributes under and not under Yamamoto's command were about to activate the safety net.

"Lambo and Gokudera are late to the extreme! They have yet to report back from their outing."

"They're late...?" Tsuna repeated, trying to remember what could have held up the Lightning Guardian and the touchy Storm Guardian.

The windows rattled as an ominous shockwave swept through the building. "Never mind, Ryohei-nii, find Hibari-san secure the hospital from the inside. Chrome, go help our men outside."

"Yes boss."

-x-

Kikyou smiled serenely as he passed, men and women fighting forced to part like the red sea. The vibrant aura of his power prevented any from straying close—_from touching him_—and those who dared were immediately snared in the power of his attack box. Bluebells bloomed where he had tread and he laughed, intoxicated, as various wave energy filtered through and fed him, fed his flowers, and devoured their origins. Less than fifty meters away he saw a line of opposition—grim-faced, nervous, resigned—putting on their rain energy rings. He cocked his head as a particularly vicious tangle of bluebells began strangling the woman at his feet. As he closed in, the rain attributes stuck their rings into an unseen device on the ground. Immediately, rain-attribute flames rose up to seal the hospital in a transparent bubble. Kikyou was tempted to sneer at their feeble defense; did they really think that they could stop the Millefiore's attack with a mere barrier?

A snip of his green-hued hair landed on his boots. Kikyou kicked his heel back and jumped into the air as a sword stabbed the place where he had been just moments before. Superbi Squalo appeared wearing a rogue, sharkish grin as he mock saluted the Millefiore's Cloud Guardian. Kikyou snorted in amusement conceding to the point earned as the silver-maned swordsman continued the battle in midair. The commander of the Millefiore's guardians let the seeds sprout and dampen the other man's flames. The rain flames ate them away until they turned dry, dead, and dust.

Though no guardian had presented themselves against him, Kikyou thought that this could be more interesting than he had originally thought it would.

-x-

_Hospital, Tsuyoshi coughed dry and hoarse into his palm. He heard something fall flat against the ground before something warm, firm, familiar hugged his side. The former informant imagined that he was too drugged up to feel what was possibly fatal pressure on his wounds. As swiftly as the warm weight had arrived, it was gone, leaving the man dazed and empty. A nurse's head appeared into view asking him questions with words that he didn't understand. She murmured a string of words and raised the syllable of the last word. A question—one he didn't know how to answer. _

_Takeshi looked back and forth between Tsuyoshi and the nurse, his eyes watering. Not wanting his son to cry anymore, Tsuyoshi raised a hand and patted the boy's arm. Takeshi sniffled and hugged his father's hand to his chest. The man felt the bird-like fragileness in the quick rise and fall of his chest. He traced the line of his son's third rib before noticing another presence in the room. He moved his hand up and cupped the base of Takeshi's skull._

"_Why?" he rasped, disbelief painting his haggard face._

"_Ask again later, maybe I'll answer that time."_

-x-

Mukuro laughed lightly in spite of himself. He left the two, Tsuyoshi and Reborn, behind, trapped in one of his simple yet complex illusions as he approached the windows. The glass—spotless—fogged up with the ghost of his breath, offered a magnificent view of the battle grounds. It was also one of the more vulnerable suits available from a tactician's point. So then why had Yamamoto Takeshi, one of the more valuable assets the Vongola possessed, been committed here where a sniper's rifle could easily take care of what many had tried for years?

The problem was that the Vongola trusted too easily. Glancing back at the reflection of himself slumped over the hospital bed, he unlocked the latch to the windows and slid it open. He put a foot against the railing. He was about to jump into the fray between the Vongola famiglia and the upcoming Millefiore when a hand grabbed his the back of his hospital gown and pulled him backwards onto the cold tiles.

"Takeshi-nii?" Lambo asked, almost plaintive at the hopes of the Rain Guardian being alive and well. And alive the swordsman was, the Japanese man breathed and thusly lived but was ultimately catatonic after the last attempt at awakening him to the real world. Mukuro smiled, belittlingly, a twist of lips different from the swordsman's laidback one. The Bovino heir took an unconscious step back and saw the prone form of Mukuro's real body half in the chair and half in the bed. He also saw Tsuyoshi and deathly pale Reborn enraptured in a conversation. The boy trembled in trepidation.

"The family needs its Rain Guardian." Mukuro offered as an explanation.

"The family needs its Rain Guardian," Hibari conceded, "not you."

"You have no idea... yes you were the first to notice, how could you not? But even you do not know what this body has been hiding all these years."

"Enough, I asked you to wake him. Not..."

Mukuro smiled slowly,

"We no longer have a choice."

-x-

"_...Where's your mother sweetie?"_

"_...Are you lost?"_

"_...I'm sorry for your loss?"_

"_...Do you know your way back?"_

"_...Do you need anything?"_

"_...Where are your parents?"_

_He wandered all over the hospital floors after seeing his father cry. His father shouldn't cry, his father was strong!—his father should have been able to protect them. People asked him many questions and he gave many answers, the stranger that had attacked them in the first place had eyed him with somewhat of a speculating expression before he had fled his mark's bedside with the grace and poise of a jungle cat contemplating its next meal. Takeshi shivered, the floors warping, walls caving ever since the man with the fedora on his head had touched him skin to skin and the yellow lightning on his finger had... done something. He wasn't sure yet which is why he wanted to ask someone about it but every time he attempted, the man was there watching with his cold eyes. He could have asked his father but his father was sick—vulnerable, a word he would learn—and even at the age of five he knew that he had to get the man away from them. _

_He felt weak, drugged and sluggish with whatever the doctor had given him to swallow with water hit his system hard. He was afraid now, prone to bouts of crying. He wanted his mother, he wanted his father, he wanted to feel safe, he wanted to play ball, he wanted a warm glass of milk, he wanted to be tucked in, he wanted... he wanted..._

_And he received._

-x-

Gokudera spat angrily as he threw a fistful of dynamites into the air. Smoke billowed down, covering them enough that Chrome could attempt a rescue mission among the fallen. Behind him, a mixture of sun attributes and storm attributes fanned out, mindful of Millefiore assault. Above them, Millefiore's Kikyou fought—_dancing_—against Varia's second sword emperor. He swore the second time the water raining down from the heavy rain shark smothered the fuse lines and rendered them unusable.

Unbeknown to him—to them all—a girl stepped past them, melting into the barrier.

-x-

"_Ta... Takeshi...?"_

_His son lay in his dead wife's arms who crooned at the child and looked upon them with her milky eyes._


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer:** Amano-sensei owns the series and its ever-lovable characters. Me? I just own the plot to this story (what plot?)

**Summary:** Time is running out for the Vongola's Rain Guardian. Still, among them are those who still believe...

**A.N.:** My Gokudera swears a lot, kind of like me when I've been woken up from a nap. I is grouchy -roar-

So I'm thinking two more chapters after this, one actual chapter and the other an epilogue of sorts. Wow, I actually finished a story (not yet) party time ;)

Once again, thanks everyone for the kickass reviews.

And those of you who read this fic without leaving comments (strangely enough I do look at the traffics page every once in a while) I know you're there. Throw me a bone won't you?

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**Requiem for a Lullaby**

_And the ghost renewed her lullaby for her son asleep at her breast._

-x-

Cecelia Aquati never knew what hit her. One moment she was looking into the mirror-like surface of the rain barrier, the next she was drowning and no matter how many times she swallowed and breathed into the water—_so salty and bitter like tears_—it continued to suffocate her until she drowned standing up. The barrier shattered, it began to come down. CEDEF's Basilicum was well protected by his rain dolphin, but with his attention divided the barrier could no longer maintain itself. The water, the girl, the siren giggled happily as she lifted herself from the lieutenant's prone form. Blushing, the brunette realized that she was wearing nothing under her cloak. She held a finger to her lips, more like a young schoolgirl than any real member of the mafia. Even when Mochida's sword cut through her with a splash, she didn't blink. Her cut hair turned to liquid and was absorbed through her ankles. It didn't matter, in a moment they all had more important things to tend to.

-x-

"There is always a choice."

"Kufufu... even for him?" Mukuro swept a hand down as though displaying a product, a weapon, an asset. Hibari supposed that the description was apt. In the end, the six guardians of the sky were nothing more than weapons for the Vongola to discard and replace. "He does not even awake for battle." The illusionist said, "He does not fight," he tapped a finger against the side of his—_Yamamoto's_—temple, "there is nothing here."

"That is not surprising." Hibari replied lazily, much like a well-fed cat staring at a bird to see if it is worth the effort of going after. Mukuro frowned then laughed, turning Yamamoto's face sideways.

"This is hardly a joking matter." Indigo flames bloomed all over his skin, ending in violets, retaining the rain-flame's reluctant points. They circled his right eye, consuming it when a second shudder—completely unrelated to the family's explosives expert—swept through the building. The reinforced glass on the window cracked as though it had been hit by a cannonball before caving in. It hit the floor, the silver fragments skittering across the tiles.

Mukuro held up Yamamoto's hand, a calloused swordsman's hand, an even color all over save for the pale rings of skin encircling the third and the fourth finger. He said in mild astonishment, "This is like Lal Mirch all over again, the parting of flames." He flipped it over, staring at the minute scars littering the man's fingertips. He stared at his wrist, bruised from needles. "Do you think he has scars?**(1)**"

"You asked me..." Hibari started, "why the sudden interest."

"Fu... is this why?" Mukuro shifted his gaze, the oddly painted eyes utterly foreign on Yamamoto Takeshi's face.

"No" Hibari admitted, "It's because he is worthy of my attentions."

-x-

Chrome was in a predicament.

No matter how many times she had stabbed, torched, and eventually spoken up enough to borrow one of Gokudera's specially tailored cocktails, the woman before her simply refused to die. She merely stared with her blank eyes, tucking the frayed rabbit tighter between her elbows at the last attempt at her life. The Vongola's Mist Guardian pointed her trident at the heavily scarred woman, barring her from getting too close. Pitting her against Gokudera would have been a better type-match but as he was busy with preventing Millefiore army from getting too close to the hospital (and the 10th) she had no choice but to solve this particular quandary herself.

How do you kill an immortal?

Mukuro hooted frightfully, his threat swelling and his armored wings flapping threateningly overhead. Momentarily she wished that the _real_ Mukuro was at her side then steeled herself for she had vowed never to burden her savior like that. She couldn't_ kill_ the Millefiore's funeral wreathe but she could slow her down, she could tie her up and made sure that she couldn't rejoin the utter chaos of the hospital grounds. She already knew that the rain-barrier had since failed, reasons unknown but status obvious with all—or most—rain-attributes fighting as best they could under the circumstances. She could not afford to focus her attentions on one rogue attribute while there were dozens more potentially dangerous in the nearest future.

"I'm still alive—" the crazed woman said once more and Chrome dropped her in the fountain and froze her body beneath the waters so that she wouldn't be able to claw herself out until it was too late.

-x-

Bluebell giggled then laughed as she slipped through the security with ease, killing a few on the way but keeping her hands relatively free as she tried to locate the Vongola's 10th head. He wasn't down below in the secured bunk, no—that place was filled with patients who had enough mobility and sense to realize that there were bigger things out there than them. The hallways were congested with bloated, smelling bodies as their dim-witted senses grasped the flush of pour that swept past them at odd intervals. And so the Millefiore's funeral wreath Bluebell skipped merrily up the stairs, occasionally looking at the odd radar Byakuran gave her, searching for the spot of orange among the cool currents of the sea...

"Millefiore!"

This wasn't orange but it was close—yellow

Daisy was a sun-attribute but this particular sun-attribute was bright and glowing. A heavily scarred kangaroo—which would have been a perfect partner for the mentally disabled Millefiore sun-attribute—charged past her with a battle cry that would have sent lesser beasts running the other way. When a fist made contact with her stomach and was swallowed, she grinned at the stunned expression on the man's face and kissed him. Ryohei yelled out something garbled—_extreme_!—as she wrapped herself around his head and began to suffocate him. The sun-attribute kangaroo bounded back towards them, her mouth closing down on where Bluebell's neck would have been had she been solid. Still, she let go when the master and his beast made contact with each other, creating enough sun-attribute flames to drain her rain-attribute flames. Panting, but satisfied that the Sun Guardian wouldn't be bothering her anymore, she left the box animal to tend to her master as she fled upstairs.

-x-

The hospital grounds looked like a warzone. Different attributes left their marks everywhere making one misstep hazardous to whatever state of health one wanted to maintain. Uri**(2)** spat as she accidentally stepped into a spot of storm flames. Thanks to the Systema C.A.I. the baby leopard was uninjured and let the flames harmlessly pass through her powering her further. She began to grow in size and length, coming up to Gokudera's knees as an adolescent as she pounced on a rope-like creature covered in red flames. Uri hissed as it bit her, retracting her paw as her own flames smothered and consumed the creature. The silver-haired bomber frowned, mentally doing attendance of all participants.

Only two Vongola Guardians were present, supported by a limited number of officers and hitman like CEDEF's Basilicum. Yamamoto's second was dead, her body left to be trampled as her men tried to resurrect the broken rain barrier. A rain attributes, those with visible dying-will flames, willingly threw themselves into the fray. Rain attributes weren't built for battle like this; they had been grouped too closely together—they would not be able to tranquillize the enemy without engaging one of their own. Yamamoto's input in placing his men would have been helpful but hindsight was 20/20 and they had no time to fix the mistake.

Heavy Rain Shark once again dumped bucketfuls of water as it passed overhead.

"Watch it fucker!"

Squalo cussed right back at him, landing with his immaculate silver hair disarray. Pulling out a rubber band from his wrist, the 2nd Sword Emperor tied his hair back and sliced through the new tangle of bluebells germinating right before his eyes. The blade cut through them and the rain-flames made sure that they would grow no more.

Balanced on one foot, Kikyou smiled.

Gokudera's eyes widened,—"the 10th"

-x-

"Guys! What are you doing?! We've got to get out of here!"

"I was thinking the same thing."

He was not surprised to see Hibari in the hospital ward; however he was surprised to see Yamamoto standing. His eyes widened to take in the scene, Yamamoto's father and Reborn immersed in some kind of a conversation in the corner. The flicker in Yamamoto's right eye told him what he had suspected when he heard Lambo whimper from the bed closest to the door. A second glance revealed Mukuro slumped across the bed, his head halfway hidden beneath the sheets.

"Mukuro, return to your body."

Mukuro shrugged easily,

"Of course Vongola." sharing a meaningful look with Hibari, the illusionist closed Yamamoto's eyes. Immediately, whatever life that had returned with Mukuro's possession fled. Knees buckled and Yamamoto began to fall face forward. With a warning shout Tsuna ran towards him but Hibari had caught the body gracefully with one arm, taking care to sweet the legs up so that they would not touch the broken glass.

With a relieved sigh the 10th head of the Vongola famiglia thanked the aloof Cloud Guardian. The former prefect uttered a scornful grunt before depositing the lifeless body into an empty bed. Mukuro stirred with a rolling crack of his neck, he seemed disoriented though the feeling seemed to have lifted by the time he got to his feet.

"What do we do?" Lambo squeaked as he scrambled away from the awakened unofficial Mist Guardian.

"Letting those two go for one," Tsuna sighed, pointing to the two elders.

Mukuro snapped his fingers with a—"hmm I'm not entirely sure that is a good idea."

Yamamoto Tsuyoshi and the Yellow Alcobaleno stared at the new intruders; Tsuna waved away the explanations for later as he readjusted his earpiece. The news was not good, already the death count numbered dozens. Among them were Yamamoto Takeshi's lieutenant Cecelia Aquati, the 1st squadron's leader and half of the 2nd squadron. The 3rd squadron was relatively fresh but disadvantaged cornered against the hospital building. Occasional explosions sounded Gokudera's presence loud and clear while Mukuro's eerie calm proclaimed Chrome's health. Ryohei was missing, which was troubling to say the least and there seemed to be an intruder on the second floor.

"We need to get this battle away from here." Tsuna bit his lips, if he and the rest of the guardians went out to the battle; it would even the playing field. However, there was the matter of intruder loose in the building as well as the fact that the opposing side's objectives were largely unknown.

"...H-- fast c-n we -bzzt- get an airlift?"

"Gokudera?!"

"-bzzt- th-y'r- aft-- -bzzt- you 10th! We -bzzt- nee- to get you –ut of there!"

Another deafening explosion, the little glass clinging to the window frames fell.

"-bzzt- 15 minutes, but they won't be able to -bzzt- stay long -bzzt, bzzt- because of Millefiore forces."

"-hat's fine! -bzzt- Oy Hi--ri! Pin-appl-! -bzzt- evacuate the 10th! Get him t-"

The transmission cut off. Tsuna held back from screaming into the mouthpiece for his trusted right hand. Everyone looked grim, even Lambo had stopped sniffling long enough to help Tsuyoshi push the IV needle back into the comatose Rain Guardian's arms.

"Really what were you thinking," Tsuna scolded as he ran his fingers into his messy hair. Reborn snapped at the brunette as he was forcibly manhandled into a wheelchair. Mukuro did not look an inch apologetic as usual. When the 10th head of the Vongola sent his Cloud Guardian a pleading look in pushing Yamamoto's stretcher down the halls, Hibari glared back hard.

That's when they came up on their impromptu intruder.

-x-

"Fuck, fuck, FUCK!" Gokudera ended up smashing his elbows against the doors to force his way in. There were dead bodies piling up at the front but no sense in destroying a perfectly good obstacle course. He ran past the huddled nurses and the security aiming at the front door. Immediately some of his men descended on him saying that there was an intruder in the building, the Sun Guardian down with the 10th Vongola on the third floor surrounded by the rest of his family. And he had just left Chrome out there to fend for herself.

"Get the rain attributes organized, get them to do whatever with the fucking weeds that's eating through our men." When several protesters chorused citing that rain attributes were weak Gokudera grabbed a fistful of whoever was the closest and dragged him near until he was basically spitting into the other's face. "Listen you retard, if you have other suggestions I would love to hear it, later." He adjusted his earpiece, chewing through his cigarette faster than it was burning. "But until then, you are going to do exactly as I say, capito?**(3)**"

The man frantically nodded. The silver-haired bomber let go.

"Does anyone else have any _good_ news?"

-x-

The news that his Sun Guardian had been felled did not go over well. The orange lit fire blossomed on his brow, expanding until it cast a crown against the chocolate brown of his hair. He pulled out his gloves, worlds apart from the childish mittens they rested as. The intruder in question giggled at the display, bounding on the balls of her feet as she quickly counted the heads of those that could fight and those that couldn't. The civilians of their wing had long fled their presence. The security had been warned to prevent anyone from giving the Funeral Wreath back up. The enemy rain attribute brought unpleasant memories of his own rain attribute still breathing on the stretcher behind him. The dying-will flames surrounding him combined, shielding him inside a bonfire.

"No Tsuna-nii! You'll destroy the building!"

Lambo's frantic voice cut through his anger cleanly as Yamamoto's blade might have done against an attacker.

'That's right,' he thought—he really was a _dame_, he could fight close range or far depending on his enemy but he couldn't fight close range without causing significant damage to surroundings. In a hospital filled with patients on all sides, he was at a disadvantage.

That did not mean however, that the others were.

With a sneer, Hibari sped forward, tonfa hitting nothing but shapeless water as he rolled to a stop behind the Funeral Wreath. Squealing that it tickled, her hand shot forward and grabbed his face, pinning the Cloud Guardian against the floor as the latter struggled, dark flames burning her watery fingers.

"Kufufu, who's pathetic now?"

The waters receded; the girl bound temporarily as Mukuro mimicked her attacks and sent her splattering against the wall. What should have been a gory scene seemed almost laughable as she reformed her body and her head lost, pouting as she rubbed her head.

"How rude."

She was almost... glowing as she surged upward, crawling across the ceiling before landing on top of Yamamoto's stretcher. She peered intently at him for a moment, unwary that three guardians were at her throat, looking for a chance to tear it out. She tapped his cheeks wonderingly, the sword passing harmlessly through her shoulders as she declared, "he's cute." And wrapped her thin girlish fingers around his throat.

It seemed that she could form and reform any parts of her body she wished. In sheer desperation, Lambo held his breath and rammed his head against her ribs. Electricity poured out, blasting her off at point blank range. Yamamoto's arched from the share current, his back lifting clear off the stretcher before landing with a dull thud. He choked gasping, tongue writhing in frothy red.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh..." Lambo continued down the line carefully cultivated by the older Guardians' loose tongues. Tsuyoshi pushed the panicking teenager away and held his son's chin up, holding his son so that he wouldn't choke on it or worse, chew it off. With only basic field medicine guiding him, he made sure that his son had a clear airway and fought to keep him stable. Tsuyoshi winced when the flames broke out afresh against Takeshi's skin. In the meantime, Bluebell had recovered enough to attack anew.

"No Lambo!" wild eyed, the Bovino heir had electricity crackling around the horns on his head. But with Bluebell running circles around them leaving water everywhere, there was a good chance they would get electrocuted as well.

Mukuro's eyes were turning again, a horizontal line drawn across the red iris.

"Oh," Bluebell said quietly at the flurry of feathered wings. Privately they all saw different things but the illusionist's main focus was on the Funeral Wreath and they could see, however faintly, the flock of birds and loose feathers filling the sky—_but why_?

"Hibari-sempai what are you doing?!" the former prefect's ring hand was literally covered in cloud-attribute flames as he held it close to his box weapon. Hibari glared at the Vongola head, his wet hair plastered to the sides of his face.

"The illusion won't hold long," he nodded towards the girl who had begun to tug at her wavy hair and scream. And while Tsuna was pondering the implications of Mukuro Rokudo and Hibari Kyouya of all people working together, he explained, "Once she gets it into her herbivore head that she can erode it with her flames, they'll be gone." Mukuro nodded from the sidelines.

"Don't worry Vongola," he said pleasantly, swinging his trident from finger to finger. "It's a temporary allegiance. Just to neutralize a common enemy."

"But the others, they won't...!"

Hibari smiled harshly, shoving the multiple cloud rings into his box weapon.

"If they do not survive, they are herbivores and thus do not _deserve_ to live."

-x-

_Yamamoto Tsuyoshi did not expect the butt of the gun to strike his stomach. He doubled over, dead faint as Reborn grabbed his arm and slowly eased him on to the tiled floor. Azzurra continued her mild singing though unaware of the scope of actions beyond the bubble of her room. Her own personal savior laid in her arms, breathing delicate and energy pulsing slowly away into obscurity. _

_Reborn stomped up to her uncharacteristically, grabbing a handful of her dark hair and pulling her head back, flinching when her milky eyes rolled back towards him, her throat still reverberating with the haunting melody that would cling to him for life. Takeshi laid undisturbed, unaware, his heartbeat sluggish, the flames low. Every two or three seconds the flames seemed to flicker and change color. But none of this mattered to Reborn as he pushed his mouth against Azzurra's lips and kissed her hard. _

_She did not react; he did not expect her to. But the harsh hand tugging at her scalp turned tender as he flicked the safety off her gun and shoved it beneath her breast. It was close to Takeshi's face; the boy would breathe into the gunpowder and memorize the scent that stilled his mother one last time. _

"_He could have been ours..."—were the final words from him to her, "you hear me? He could have been ours."_

_Then he pulled the trigger._

_._

**(1)** Does anyone know about the tattoo/scars Lal Mirch has on the side of her face. I think I heard/read somewhere that it was a scar from when she became the holder of the corrupt pacifier. Because her curse was incomplete (hence her growth TYL) her original attribute (rain) was split into cloud and mist attribute respectably.

I am going off on a tangent and saying that rain attributes can all have their wave energy tampered with (like Lal) which is what Mukuro is referring to. I'm guessing the process is also very traumatic and leaves physical scars on a person

**(2)** Do box animals have genders? Koujiro and Jirou (Yamamoto's swallow and dog) seem to have masculine names so I'm guessing they're male but Uri? Female. I'm writing it/her female.

**(3)** Italian for understand if you didn't get that :)

**A.N.:** Yes, a 2nd author's note. I thought a short explanation might be in order for the dynamics between the Yamamoto family and Reborn. So basically, Reborn liked Azzurra who ran off with Yama!papa and had Yama!jr. When Reborn was ordered to go off them, he eagerly took the job on misplaced vengeance and killed her. Yama!papa was critically injured in the fight but Reborn was able to manipulate Yama!jr's budding attributes to basically sedate the older man and do partial reconstruction when it turned out that Yama!jr's wave energy was able to split in two: cloud and mist. Like any other person with a healthy good old guilty conscience, he stuck with the family to see that 1) Yama!sr survived. 2) Yama!jr was alright. Unfortunately, Yama!jr was able to wander off and reanimate his mother's corpse in a feat worthy of a summer horror flick using the same methods he used to keep his father alive.

And now Reborn is crying about should have/could have/would have u.u

Yeah, that's about it.

I didn't know how to write that in there more clearly, any other questions?


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer:** Amano-sensei owns these lovely characters though I can't personally help but feel that they're being wasted. Hello?! Mafia?! What's the point of being a mafia then?! Why not make everyone a part of some shounen-crime fighting team?!! -cough- sorry 'bout that.

**Summary:** Time is running out for the Vongola's Rain Guardian. Still, among them are those who still believe...

**A.N.:** Yes, the long-awaited (hah) chapter is here and I lied, I'm sorry, only by a technicality though. An epilogue is on the way so... you're not quite finished here yet. –ties everyone down for the next three months- (just kidding, I think... o.o;;) You're always welcome to ask about the insane schematics and theories at the end :)

**Warnings**: Gokudera and Squalo's tongues? **Un-betaed** but hey, at least I didn't mess up Genkishi's name this time?

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Chaerring Trinity – sorry I missed you last time but hopefully the two chapters since has cleared things up... maybe not... thanks for the review!

marinamer – Thanks, hopefully this chapter was up to your expectations :D

the e t e r n a l -STORY – And sadly, we just seem to like to watch him suffer in pain –guilt, guilt!!-

KusajishiFuktaicho – Tsuna is alive (just wait till I get him in another oneshot :P) for now... just like in the manga... just for now. And I totally get you with the whole fav thing? Okay I have a 100 views on my counter and maybe there are a few favs thrown in. Where are the reviews? _

And yeah, I forgot to reply to everyone's review last time -cough- IrealizedafterIuploadedandwastoolazytogobackandchangeitwhichisprobablywhymychaptersareriddledwithspellingmistakesandgrammarmistakescoughcoughcough...

No it's not your memory you should be worried about, it's mine :C

Oh and anyone got spare candy corn? I didn't get any this year :/

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**Requiem for a Lullaby**

.

"_...where are we?"_

_The figure at the door hesitated._

"_Don't worry Takeshi, we're safe."_

_What a sweet like it had been..._

-x-

Yamamoto's body convulsed beneath Reborn's hands. The yellow Alcobaleno swore, pressed his knuckles against his forehead as pain hit him again and he cursed, trying to find where his fingers were in the dizzy whirlpool of colors. Behind him, Lambo apologized profusely, tears and snot running down his face. Yamamoto Tsuyoshi brushed his son's hair from his face and tilted is head back; gently tugging at the younger's tongue so that he wouldn't accidentally choke on it. When the comatose swordsman bit down hard on the older man's thumb, the man barely winced.

Tsuna squeezed the younger Yamamoto's hand, head bowed and thinking hard about something.

"The flames are gone," he whispered furiously to himself. "The illusions... but your father's still alive." His hazel eyes lit with sudden realization. He pushed Reborn away and cupped his Rain Guardian's face.

"The illusions are gone Yamamoto! Yamamoto!!"

-x-

The 2nd Swords Emperor made an impromptu landing behind the Vongola's Mist Guardian. The girl squeaked, immediately stammering out a string of letters that was acceptable as his name. He flung his wet hair back, uncaring if it hit the one-eyed girl. His heavy rain shark expelled the air around its gills and its bloodied mouth as a pseudo-roar, terrorizing the men around it as it promptly tore one in two. Belatedly perhaps, the assassin plugged a small earpiece into his ear and frowned, his eyes narrowing. Chrome stepped closer, as though to hear some news for her earpiece had broken down halfway during the battles. With her trident—more thinly crafted than that of her mentor's—she killed the bluebells blossoming at their feet. Her facial expression grew grave as the silver-haired man relayed to her what they had all feared—

—It was a set up

-x-

Hibari spat sideways, tasting salt—so different from bitter metals—in his mouth and not liking it at all. Mukuro began to laugh, his eyes glowing. It was a strategy used against those that didn't know the notorious Vongola mist-attribute very well. Certainly the dark flames and the ruby orb rolling in the right socket created a terrifying scene for the Funeral Wreath pinned under his trident. But the former prefect's last move had cancelled out all existing flames and the weapon was no longer as solid as it should have been. And the girl herself, still fluid in her movements, able even to slip past the fork-like prongs, was pinned not long under the illusionist's grasp. The thin column of her neck burst like a bubble in his hand as she giggled, leaving trace foam on his skin as she slithered underfoot homing in on the 10th Vongola.

Crows this time—began to peck at the stream of water. When that didn't stop the rain-attribute, Lambo let the electric current flow down from his horns to where the wet spots were, effectively electrocuting them all. It was a precarious situation, one created by the fact that Hibari expected his hedgehogs to be able to block all flames within the sphere. Instead, the box-animals had merely consumed it, aggravating Hibari's condition by simultaneously suppressing and feeding him wave-energies—something was wrong.

"Oya... this is not exactly what I expected." Mukuro said almost idly as he eyed the Vongola being guarded by a teenager, a dying Arcobaleno and a swordsman past his prime respectively. Out of the three, only the Thunder Guardian had the means of hurting the rain-attribute directly. Out of all three, only Reborn had an actual projectile weapon—Yamamoto Tsuyoshi was unarmed. "How is it that a one little girl is causing us so much trouble?" The mist-attribute turned his focus back to the former prefect as he gritted out,

"It matters little; I will bite her to death."

It would have been more impressive had he not chosen that moment to press the back of his hand to his lips. He coughed and blood guzzled out. The now-useless set of box and rings tumbled out of his limp fingers and dabbed the cold, white floor in reds. The entire structure seemed to shudder but the former prefect did not notice.

"You can try," Bluebell taunted, giggling wildly. "But I'm a rain-attribute." She leaned in close to Mukuro's face, the illusionist drowning in her shallow mounds. She threw Hibari a saucy grin and whispered into the mist-attribute's ear as though sharing a secret deep in her soul. "_We're closer to the sky than you'll ever know._"

-x-

Mukuro was there, wearied, the debonair air gone from him.

"You lie; you feign ignorance to protect your family. But do you really...? Can you really describe this as protecting them?"

Yamamoto sighed, his breath a thin film of mist clinging to the air.

"I don't want to fight."

"It's in your nature to fight."

"Doesn't mean I want to."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm scared!" Yamamoto lashed out, and his anger and terror became a sword that struck against neck. Blood spilled down the pale column but the illusionist did not seem to mind and drew the man close when he leaned forward. The Rain Guardian shuddered, uncertain, afraid. The sword was gently pried from his hand; it was never a sword in the first place. There had been no meaning behind it other than to drive Mukuro away. "I'm afraid that it won't be enough. What if this time I'm not enough?"

The mist-attribute took Yamamoto's face into his hands and kissed him near the edge of his brow—not as lovers, though there might have been such romps in the past, but as friends who knew each other very well. It was chaste and sweet, a simple greeting between friends. It was an encouragement coaxing a smile back into the pale face that had been asleep for too long. The lines in Mukuro's eye faded as he brought their foreheads together. Yamamoto began to hum, eyes glazed, haunting, loving, soothing.

"You will be."

"_Sometimes I wish I could be like your birds."_

What stood in front of him was a boy but with words like no other. Mukuro's finger trailed down and gripped the child's chin firmly, unmarred and smooth like it had been 3 years ago. Yamamoto merely stared at him with weary eyes, too tired to escape as he did before; too exhausted to do much but to listen—too late for anything.

"The Cloud Guardian has set up his sphere to buy us time, but you already know..."

"_...To be called upon when they're needed and the rest of the time in oblivion."_

"...that he will not last."

The eyes were the color of rain, and wet. It was strange, such a cheerful, optimistic creature in real life, so many sorrows in his heart. Mukuro knelt, one knee bent beneath him. "Will you help us now?"

"How?"

Indeed, the physical damage had not been faked. The bullets were still in his body, piercing new places every day. Mukuro no longer had the strength to spare in order to keep them in place. It would have to be fast, it would be dirty, and it would be painful.

"A deal." He drawled out calmly, grasping a sinewy wrist when the boy looked as though he would bolt. "...I will help you and in return..." He lunged forwards, capturing the boy's mouth. Garbled words passed through them and Yamamoto's lips stretched thin and grew dry. A rueful laughter as they began to evaporate, indigo flames flaring at their feet. It wasn't their—Yamamoto—not exactly, but it was a start in the right direction at last and if anything, it wasn't an excellent substitute after the long drought.

-x-

Mukuro's body exploded into clouds of feathers. Bluebell shrieked as the delicate tendrils floated all around and touched her in places she couldn't fend them off of. Hibari took the opportunity to engage her, knocking her about in her state of confusion. He wiped his mouth free of blood, blue eyes narrowed dangerously as he abandoned one of his tonfa in favor of shoving his hand into her ribs. Her eyes widened in mute shock before distorting to that of rage. She began to change colors—could water really change color? In this place where their source of light was their inner flames, being channeled through the pointed walls...—a shade of peach as pale as her skin. Hibari threw her off, snarling as they circled each other again, waiting for that one break in their armor defense.

"We're going to die." Lambo said faintly and privately Tsuna couldn't help but agree. Hibari wasn't a regular sparring mate of his, that role fell to Yamamoto and the few brave—_and idiotic enough_—to take the challenge. While shattering the regular cloud sphere had become a little more than a distracting chore for them in their selective battles, its reverse form was something rarely revealed to anyone that would live to tell about it. Unfortunately for all of them, it looked like they were all selected to be the part of the not-living group.

"Takeshi?" the older Yamamoto gasped breathlessly clutching at his only son's limp hand.

"Yamamoto?"

'Yamamoto' opened his eyes. His right eye immediately teared up with a trickle of red down his cheeks.

"You're _almost _right Vongola."

-x-

'_Takeshi?'_

"_Yamamoto?!"_

"_YAMAMOTO!!"_

It was like swimming through tar. The colors inside the sphere were too bold, each individual hue screaming at his eyes, struggling to be seen. He closed his eyes in reflex but they didn't go away, his right eye remained open, courtesy of one mist-attribute.

'We need to get out of here.' Yamamoto thought muzzily, unsure if his thoughts were vague because of the lack of air or because he had just woken up. There was a taste of blood on his tongue—did he bite when he awoke? He grasped at the air, numb, unable to feel any physical sensations. 'Maybe I'm just stupid.'

He realized that he had spoken the last sentiment out loud. Tsuna slapped him rather sharply, apology in undertone but screaming frantically.

"You're not stupid!"

'_Oh'_

"Don't cry Tsuna," he said, trying to form words in his mouth. "Don't..."

He needed to get up but strangely his limbs were jelly, this had all been so much easier inside his head. The inside of his head was simple, but the outside was real. That's why he was outside wasn't it? His head was starting to hurt again as he made another attempt to get up.

"This was your great idea at escape?" Hibari snarled, backed against the wall, a stream of red steadily dripping down from his chin. "Creating another weakness?!"

Then the pain in his temple flared as he got to his knees, lips twitching into a serene smile.

"There is another in here; you can smell him can't you?"

It was odd, being awake while having someone else control his bodily functions. He _heard_ himself say the words to Hibari, but it really wasn't him was it? It was Mukuro. He felt disjointed and began to shake, the beginnings of a meltdown. His arms crept around his shoulders, trying to sooth him the best they could. He frothed at the mouth, bile rising from his throat. The former prefect raised a skeptical eye, kicking Lambo forward to face Bluebell for now.

"Go after him." Mukuro said again, arms still askew around his torso. He turned towards the others, eyes half-mast, the right eye turning vivid red with the bleeding. The smile on his face was wrong, he would have never been able to describe the chilling sensation spiraling down his spine but he would have said—the smile was wrong. That wasn't his... it wasn't Takeshi's smile. "And _we_... will take care of the rest."

"How?"

The tonfas were already drawn, cruel blue eyes scanning the sphere for a possible hiding place.

"How _he/we/I_ usually do it."

Hibari whipped around,

"You..!"

-x-

"Where's the fucking helicopter?!" Gokudera tried to holler over the shrieks of panicked patients. Immediately, his subordinates threw him an earpiece undamaged by the string of dynamite blasts he had set up near the south wall. They now had a clear view of the battle ground but wouldn't be noticed by the outside. Fortunately, it looked as though things were wrapping up and the aerial escape wouldn't be necessary. Unfortunately, this was Millefiore gunning for their 10th head of the family. As the right hand of the Vongola, Gokudera couldn't afford to disregard any possibilities.

"We -_bzzt_- lost contact with Echo-4."

"_-bzzt- see smoke!"_

Gokudera flung the earpiece away, hitting some random storm attribute riding on his attribute flames before alighting his dynamite sticks with the fizzling end of his cigarette.

"Fucking useless...!"

The men ducked before him as the explosion rocked the air. Unruffled, even through the force of the blast, Gokudera commanded,

"Get these people out of here!"

He caught a random rain-attribute on the way, what was his name... his name was unimportant he decided as he began to drag the man along. "You're coming with me."

-x-

"That doesn't even hurt anymore you stupid, _stupid_ brat!" Bluebell roared in rage, green lightning arcing all over the surface of her back, solidifying her, making her more susceptible to his attack. Other than her ability to transform, she really didn't have much fighting capabilities. With her box weaponry out of commission thanks to the Vongola's Cloud Guardian, her only weapon were the bodily flames she produced and quite possibly her teeth.

Which what scared Lambo the most when she came one too many centimeters too close to the sensitive area of his crotch.

"Boss... I can't hold her back any longer!!!"

Mukuro-Yamamoto were still recovering, trying to synchronize themselves to the point where they wouldn't puke all over the Rain Guardian's body. Yamamoto Tsuyoshi hovered over them, feeling powerless. Reborn laid at their feet, his breathing shallow, batting away Tsuna's administrations as foolish whims of his former student.

Yamamoto stopped the urge to puke as his vision divided into fours again. It felt as though he actually had four eyes pointed towards different directions.

"_Dad_?" Takeshi whimpered, nausea rolling off of him in waves. He sought out his father's weathered hand and held it tight. It was warm, so warm and comforting that he nearly sighed in relief. "Dad, dad..." And his father was whole, wasn't that nice, he hadn't died the moment Mukuro had internally extinguished the mist flames burning low in his stomach. "Dad..." he fell to his knees, only vaguely aware of the fighting, the shouting, the father beside him. "Need Koujiro."

'_What are you doing? The different flames may burn here but you cannot open a box in this sphere.'_

"It's alright Tsuna. The sphere? I can break it open."

Takeshi nearly laughed as wordlessly, the rain-patterned box was pressed into his hands. He wondered if he wasn't as alright as he thought when he accepted mist-attribute's deal. He tried to smile the usual friendly, dopey, sunny smile at his childhood friend and wonder what it looked like from the other side. Using other's as support he got up, his hospital gown damp and sticking to his skin.

His nose bled and the blood slipped into his mouth. He took one step forward, the box splintering in his hands.

'_Do you believe me? trust me? care about me? know me?'_

A flood of thoughts, Mukuro could barely begin to process them all as the body moved, _slow_, but faster than it should have been able to as the swallow's box broke apart.

Yamamoto Takeshi could not open a box but if the box was broken, the creature, _the weapon_ inside could not return.

The illusionist gripped his legs and began to run faster.

-x-

Mercilessly, Hibari drove his tonfa into the side of the swordsman's head. The blow did not connect but the concussive inertia did more than to glance off of his ears. His brief disguise broken Genkishi defended himself with the two of his four blades. The Cloud Guardian had found the uninvited guest at last, the reason for the sudden instability in his sphere. Furious with the interruption of his plans, not even the prospect of fighting Millefiore's supposed '_greatest_' placating him in the least, he stuck the tonfa between the two swords and sent the Mist Guardian flying with a single kick. Hibari spat off to the side, unbecoming of him he supposed, but too infuriated to care.

The not-quite-herbivore was planning _that_ route of escape again. He absolutely despised _that_ escape plan. It gave the cloud hedgehogs bloat which in turn made him feel as though he had swallowed watermelons times a several times.

"You're the Vongola's Cloud Guardian aren't..."

Another blow struck and an expression of uncertainty blooming on the other man's face from the ire directed at him.

"I belong to _no one_." Hibari informed him shortly, giving Genkishi enough of a breather to abandon his dented swords and pick up another pair. "You will do well to remember it."

-x-

Ingenious really, how the reversed spike ball was actually set up. The surface of the flames actually absorbed all attributed flames both foreign and familiar to feed itself and propagate and defend to whatever levels Hibari deemed necessary. This meant that under usual circumstances all flames would be damped in exacerbating conditions where air supply dwindled by the second. The reverse-sphere was designed only to reopen when there was (usually Hibari) one remaining body of flame. The opponent would either have to defeat Hibari (an impossible task) or trick the sphere into thinking that there was only one flame left. Or as the Rain Guardian had the fortune of figuring out, he could overload the system by 'bloating' the hedgehogs. Yamamoto forgot where he had learned this, or if he had learned it at all. Reborn had once called him a natural born hitman—so perhaps he had known all along.

It wasn't the safest method of escaping Hibari's wrath; it usually made the former prefect queasy afterwards and hell on those all around him. And it wasn't as though everyone had the store of flames necessary to break apart a cloud box-weapon.

'_Neither do you.'_

Koujiro screeched, taking to the air even before the splinters of his former home had time to settle on the ground. The swallow looked different without the flames. Oddly enough he looked larger; the angled wing wider, the forked tail longer. Even without a direct order from his keeper, the swallow, flew true like an arrow, into Bluebell's face.

The Bovino heir rolled away instinctively, electricity crackling at his horns even as Yamamoto's swallow drove the female rain-attribute against the spiked walls. The girl was solid now, a victim to Lambo's elettrico cornata. The attack wasn't doused with lightning-attribute flames as it normally should have been, but the paralysis was the same, the girl wasn't anymore immune for being liquid.

She sobbed hysterically at the bird, ordering it to stop, many blue-black feathers littering the floor. Then suddenly the bird stopped, its dark eyes assessing her critically as a hawk might to its prey. It folded its wings then stretched them out wide, preening the long shafts torn from its primaries. Below the bird was a hand, connected to her left breast, pierced through by the cloud hedgehog's needle.

Her form rippled as did the sphere, inwardly shuddering as she began to foam at his mouth, her body and his blood mingling, the bird unperturbed and singing, the man behind his wing sadly smiling, the rolling red eye sneering.

Then she was falling, forward and the man beneath her. His hand still on her, on top of her box of carnage, which was broken now and wouldn't Byakuran be so angry when he heard of it. Still... her blue eyes slipped to a close, wasn't he so warm—_so real, so solid?_—this Rain Guardian of theirs? Wasn't it...

-x-

Gokudera had gotten last of the patients out of the third floor when the box animal twisted. Which was a feat in itself because the box animal was massive and round and any twisting going on should have been impossible to see but the ball was warping, compressing down on itself as though it hadn't swallowed more than half a dozen people inside.

"Get ready to use your flames to stall them understand?" Gokudera snarled at the rain-attribute.

"Yessir." The man cringed visibly, a marked difference between him and a certain baseball-idiot.

Then with a sigh, the cloud hedgehog resumed its usual form and remained floating in midair, occasionally licking its noticeably round stomach.

"Tenth!!"

-x-

Yamamoto Tsuyoshi had a gun.

The bullets curved in their trajectory. It was something that Yamamoto Tsuyoshi did with the gun, the easy flick of his wrist even Reborn would be hard-pressed to match. The bullet hit the wall, the fragments ricocheting off of the oddly beautiful cloud-attribute under Millefiore's command. He looked conflicted at the bedraggled group of men crouching before him, injured yes but ready to attack if needed to.

"I think..." he said at last, "that we will withdraw for today."

With a final slam of his sword, Genkishi backed off, his sword sporting a debilitating crack down the middle.

"What?! This is an opportunity, how dare you call yourself one of Byakuran-sama's..."

"Genkishi," the man spoke piercingly, "Byakuran-sama wishes our return."

The swordsman flinched.

"And I do believe you have something that belongs to us Vongola...?"

"Kikyou?" Bluebell whimpered to the green-haired man. "I'm sorry..."

The Funeral Wreath's face creased in concern for the girl. He stepped easily, confidently towards her, simply raising a hand when the slight hiss signaled that the Vongola's Storm Guardian had lighted another bomb.

The cloud-attribute gently lifted the girl from the prone Rain Guardian, nothing that her box of carnage had been pierced through. He glanced down at the swordsman who, he noticed for the first time, was awake.

"Were you the one who did this?"

The rain guardian's eye flickered—one dark honey and the other red. When he spoke, he didn't speak as though a normal person would speak though judging by the damaged they've all incurred, none of them were on par with normality.

"And if I was?"

Yamamoto smiled and inwardly Kikyou shuddered with the promised horrors should the cloud-attribute not choose his next words very carefully.

"Get away from him."

The tenth head of the Vongola was young and if Byakuran's powers were anything to go by—_weak_. Indeed, it seemed as though all of his guardians did the heavy lifting for him. But these powerful men and women went out of their way to personally serve the young brunette. It was best to be cautious.

"Peace Vongola, I have no intentions towards him." He stared back at the Rain Guardian before moving. "Come Genkishi, we're leaving."

Yamamoto chuckled quietly at this and was joined by Mukuro's odd laughter. When the last traces of Millefiore had gone, Hibari struck the wall with his tonfa, blue eyes promising violence as he began to stagger down the hallway.

"Get away from me or I'll bite you all to death."


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer:** If I owned KHR, Yamamoto would have more screen time. Unfortunately I don't, so he doesn't.

**Summary: **Yamamoto's in a coma and doesn't seem to want to wake up.

**A.N.: **And this... is the end...

-x-

"How's Yamamoto's father?"

"The pervert doctor says he's fine, whatever damage there had been in the past... it's gone now."

"Yamamoto?"

Gokudera bit the end of his cigarette and kicked the ground, looking sullen and a little more than lost though he tried to hide it from the Vongola's hyper-intuition.

"The surgery went well. He just... won't wake up."

"So we're back to the beginning..." Tsuna murmured, staring out the window and at the newly installed fountain on the hospital grounds. The explosives expert said nothing, but there was nothing left to be said.

"He'll be alright tenth," Gokudera blurted out, "he's an idiot but he's our idiot. He... he won't leave you." The end of the sentence was punctuated by a rather frustrated growl at the lack of eloquence presented in the current situation. The Storm Guardian ran his fingers through his hair, tearing out more than one lengthy silver strand in the process. A solid hand held him back from doing anything rash—after all, this was the Cloud Guardian's domain and his word was the law above all else even if the silver-haired man would not admit it.

"Thank you Gokudera."

"...You're welcome tenth."

"Get some rest; dealing with Hibari-san couldn't have been easy."

Gokudera snorted, regaining some of the fire in his eyes.

"I don't see why the Vongola has to pay for all the damages considering it was the bastard who wanted to fight here in the first place..."

Tsuna smiled,

"Good night Gokudera."

"Good night tenth."

-x-

It was late and Tsuna should have been on his way back to his hotel. Hibari's generosity in providing Yamamoto with a room did not extend to him as well after all. From the nervous looks given to him by the security guards and night nurses, he deduced that the Cloud Guardian was stalking the hospital grounds once more. Hopefully they would not see each other until morning though that ultimately depended on the prefect himself.

But as he approached the fourth floor, to the undamaged wing where all the patients had been moved, Tsuna felt his footsteps quicken, his breath becoming short. The hallway seemed to grow dark, narrow, though behind him, the evening staff was chatting quietly amongst themselves, the lights dimmed but their eyes still half curious on his back.

The darkness gave an illusion of nothingness and from that nothingness came a sound—a song. There should have been no sound. The nurses would have seen to the silence and the comfort of their patients. But there was a song, music, a familiar voice—a lullaby.

He didn't remember the rest of the journey, neither opening the door nor feeling his legs give away so that he would have to lean against the wall. But he remembered his Rain Guardian sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair, his spine stiff and obviously in pain, but holding Reborn's hand and humming the tune to a lullaby whose words they had all long forgotten.

-x-

"Ya... Yamamoto..."

"Hi Tsuna."

-x-

**A.N.:** Yamamoto woke up! And here I had half a mind to kill him... -cough- alls well that ends well right?

Thanks everyone for reading :D


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